


A Little World Made Cunningly

by Laura Kaye (laurakaye)



Series: A Match Made in (Dumpster) Heaven [2]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Sex, Awesome Phil Coulson, Body Worship, Caretaking, Cheesecake, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, Dorks in Love, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fortunately Clint Barton is Great At Hugs, Happy Ending, Happy Sex, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Improvised Furniture, Injury Recovery, Kissing, Love Bites, M/M, Marking, Meeting the Parents, Misunderstandings, Naked Cuddling, Oral Sex, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Phil Coulson Needs a Hug, Post-Coital Cuddling, Post-Mission, Potlucks Can Be Hazardous, Power bottom Phil Coulson, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Phil Coulson, Realistic Discussion of the Fluid Exposure Risk Inherent in Working for SHIELD, Returning Home, Rimming, Sea Monsters, Service Top Clint Barton, Team as Family, The Avengers Are Good Bros, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Is a Good Bro, True Love, Wade Wilson Isn't Down With Homophobia, Wade Wilson is a Good Friend, Wheelchairs, a wee bit of power exchange, how can you both be pining while you are actively dating, love chicken, offscreen injury, well kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-08-26 08:13:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 48,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16677889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurakaye/pseuds/Laura%20Kaye
Summary: Six weeks ago, Phil met his crush, Hawkeye the Avenger: this was good.When they met, Phil was amnesiac, wearing a stripper's pants, and convinced he was dead and Hawkeye was an angel: this wasextremelybad.Once Phil got his memories back, he'd thought he'd blown any chance he'd ever had with Clint. But miraculously, Clint gave him a shot: this wasamazing.Clint wanted Phil to come to Avengers Team Dinner: this was... terrifying.All he had to do was impress the Avengers and show Clint that he could fit in with Clint's superhero friends. He could manage that, surely. After all, what could possibly go wrong?





	1. Six Weeks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jackdaws45](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jackdaws45/gifts).



> Last year, Jackdaws45 won a 5,000 word story from me in the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico auction. Now, a year and 35,000+ extra words later, here it is.
> 
> This story is in the same universe as Thrown and Overflown, and is set between the main action of the story and the epilogue.
> 
> I want to thank Kathar for outstanding beta, and Jackdaws45 for being amazingly patient with me as the story ballooned again and again. I hope it was worth the wait.
> 
> The story is completely drafted. I will be posting in chapters as beta and editing are completed. There are currently 10 chapters, though that may change a little during edits.

"So," Clint said, pushing his pasta around on his plate. "Soooooooooooooooo."

Phil looked across the table. He’d picked this restaurant because the Yelp reviews said it had a “romantic atmosphere” and was “great for couples,” but at the moment he couldn’t help wishing he’d gone for something better lit. It was hard to be sure what the expression on Clint’s face meant, and the dim light wasn’t helping. 

“So,” Clint said again. He fiddled with his fork.

“Oh, god," Phil said, taking a fortifying sip of his wine and reminding himself firmly that there was no logical reason for the nervous flip in his stomach. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened," Clint said. “I mean, nothing you don’t know about already. Just, um. It's been six weeks on Thursday. Since we started…“ he made an expressive hand gesture. “You know. Dating, or whatever.”

"...oh," Phil said, blinking. Had it really been that long? He thought back, to that fateful undercover mission that had ended so spectacularly, to that first night when they’d had pizza and watched _Dog Cops_ on Clint’s sofa. Phil had changed his clothes four times that night, trying to hit on an outfit that was casual and flattering but didn’t look like he was trying too hard. He’d been so nervous he’d felt queasy as he made his way to Bed-Stuy, but then Clint had opened the door, beaming, his arms opening in an offer Phil was quick to accept. He’d held Phil tight, the strength of his embrace thrilling and comforting both at once, and Phil’s nerves had fallen away as Clint steered him inside. 

Phil had hardly been able to pay attention to the show, too preoccupied with the feeling of Clint’s leg close to his as they sat. They’d kept glancing over at one another, quick and tentative, until Phil’s skin had felt alive with the desire to touch. Finally, Clint had looked over, and said “hey, no problem if you don’t wanna, but is this okay?” and put his arm on the back of the couch behind Phil’s shoulders. 

Phil had sighed, and let himself curl into the warmth of Clint’s side. Clint had shivered and curled his hand over Phil’s shoulder, his arm settling with a comforting weight, and Phil had never wanted to move.

Later, Clint had said “I really want to kiss you, is it okay if I kiss you?” and Phil had told him “anytime,” and meant it.

That had been the start of it, and now it felt like Clint had always been part of Phil’s life. Honestly, he still felt a little thrill of surprised joy every time Clint smiled at him, or texted him a picture of a cute dog, or picked up his calls on the first ring. It almost felt like hubris, to start counting time like he thought they’d have a future together, would make plans and mark anniversaries. 

He looked across the table at Clint, trying to look encouraging. ”So?”

“There's a team dinner that night," Clint said, studying his fork. His shoulders were a little hunched, his fingers tense; was it actually possible that _he_ was the one feeling nervous about this? He was hardly the one who had something to prove.

"I mean, I would have voted for the weekend," Clint continued. "But Thor wanted to host. Um, metaphorically speaking."

"Ah," Phil said. 

"I mean you don't have to if you aren't ready," Clint said. “I know I said it was a rule but it’s not really—I mean, it kind of is, but it doesn’t have to be six weeks _exactly_. So if you don’t want to, they’ll understand. But um. I may have talked. About you? Kind of a lot.”

Phil had a horrible thought. 

“Oh, no! Not about that,” Clint said, apparently reading his fear in his expression. “I haven’t mentioned, you know.” He lowered his voice. “The dumpster. Or Tatiana’s pants. Or Applebee’s. I told them we met through a mission and the rest was classified.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Phil said, relaxing. “I’d hate to make a bad first impression.”

“You could never,” Clint said loyally. 

Phil took a deep breath, calming himself. This was a good thing, after all. Clint wanted him to meet the Avengers—to meet his family, basically, given that his brother wasn’t currently around. It was probably a little fast, but Phil couldn’t make himself care. He didn’t think Clint _could_ go too fast for him. He was already starting to catch himself having optimistic daydreams of the two of them, still together next summer, next Christmas, all the Christmases. He had to be careful not to scare Clint off, not to give in to his less dignified impulses. He could see a future for them, he knew it; he just had to show himself worthy of it.

“Anyway, do you think you could make it?” Clint was looking down at his plate, twirling noodles idly onto his fork and then letting them fall. “It’s totally okay if not. Wait, did you have a thing this week? You did, didn’t you? I’m sorry, I’ll tell them next time. Unless you don’t—”

"Clint," Phil said, interrupting the flow of words. He did actually have plans for Thursday, but he could change them for this. ”I’d love to meet your team."

"Yeah?" Clint looked up, his face so radiantly happy it made Phil's heart flip over. How had he gotten so lucky, to be here with Clint, to have Clint want him? Phil wasn’t a superhero; he wasn’t anything that unusual at all. But Clint seemed to think he was special, somehow, and Phil wasn’t going to lose his chance.

"Of course," he said, sliding his foot over to knock against Clint's under the table. He wanted to always be the one who made Clint smile like that. He’d do far more than go to an intimidating dinner party for Clint’s sake. ”They're important to you, and that makes them important to me."

"Awesome," Clint said, grinning and bright and so lovely it made Phil’s chest ache. "So hey, you wanna maybe take this party somewhere more private?"

Phil shivered a little at the promise gleaming in his eyes. He caught the server's eye and signaled for the check. "Absolutely."

Much later, Phil was lying tangled in Clint’s purple duvet, pinned under 220 pounds of naked gorgeous archer who was drooling a little on his chest. He was drowsing pleasantly, keeping himself from sliding all the way into sleep mainly so that he could keep enjoying the delicious ache in his inner thighs and the sweet weight of Clint’s arm slung across his hips, clutching him in slumber like a teddy bear. Downstairs, Lucky was ambling around the apartment, sniffing corners; soon, Phil knew, he’d stop by his bowls to check if any kibble had magically appeared, take a drink, and then jump up onto the sofa to sleep. 

Phil liked that he knew these things. He liked that he was familiar here, that Clint and Lucky treated him like he belonged. He wanted everyone in Clint’s life to feel the same, neighbors and Avengers and all. He’d make the best impression he could at the dinner. It was a potluck, Clint had said. Phil was a good cook when he put his mind to it, he’d have to make something really impressive…

Phil jolted fully awake, going tense all over. He’d have to _make something_. For the _Avengers_. Something _impressive._ He grabbed his phone off the nightstand and texted Jasper. 

HELP, he wrote. WHAT DO I BAKE TO MEET CAPTAIN AMERICA???

He got an answer almost at once, because Jasper apparently never slept. 

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, it read. 

Phil had the _worst friends_. 

"Phil? 'S wrong?" Clint lifted his head, blinking bleary eyes in the blue glare of Phil's phone. 

"Nothing," Phil told him, running his free hand over Clint's rumpled hair and forcing himself to relax. "I just had to set my alarm." Clint hummed, his eyelids drooping again.

"You sure?"

"I'm sure, babe. Go back to sleep." 

"Only if you do," Clint said, though the giant yawn that interrupted him halfway through made Phil skeptical as to whether he could follow through. “Sleeping time now.”

Phil put his phone away, and Clint nestled back into the hollow of Phil's shoulder with a happy sigh, sneaking one hand up to pet Phil's chest hair, coming to rest over his heart. Phil's arm was mostly asleep, but he didn't even care. Clint Barton—Avenger, everyday hero, and Phil's honorary guardian angel—was cuddled up in bed beside him, soft and warm and trusting. The bed could have been made of hot coals, and Phil wouldn't have wanted to move.

Clint was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and Phil desperately wanted to keep him. Phil might not be a superhero, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t impress Clint’s friends. He’d prove that he could be what Clint needed, that he could fit into Clint’s life. He'd be the most impressive non-powered significant other that had ever come to team dinner. 

(He conveniently overlooked that one of said significant others was a Fortune 100 CEO and one was a Nobel laureate.) 

Phil visualized the scene: Captain America would clap Clint on the shoulder, teeth flashing in a wide and genuine smile. "Clint," Captain America would say, "we're all so happy that you've got a swell guy like Phil in your life. You're a lucky man."

Clint would look over at Phil and smile, the little sweet one he used sometimes when they were alone. "I sure am, Cap," he'd say. "I sure am." Phil'd duck his head modestly and insist that no, he was the lucky one, and one of the Avengers would laugh companionably and say “don’t let this one get away, Barton,” and Clint would sling an arm around Phil’s waist and steal a kiss and say “I won’t.”

Real Clint snorted a little in his sleep, distracting Phil from his reverie. 

Phil could do this, he thought. He'd done harder things, after all.

Operation: Impress The Avengers was a go.


	2. Time and SHIELD Wait For No Man's Social Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You. Are worried that you’re going to be too weird. For _Clint Barton,”_ Jasper said. “The man who fights aliens with a bow and arrow while wearing a purple leotard. _That_ Clint Barton.”
> 
> “He doesn’t wear the purple anymore,” Phil said sullenly.

The next day, Phil got called in to work.

“Goddammit, this is the first Sunday off I’ve had in a month,” he griped, pulling on his pants. “I had _plans._ ”

“They were awesome plans,” Clint said, pouting up at him from where he was lounging across the bed. “I liked your plans.” A corner of sheet just barely failed to cover the plum-colored hickey on one lush, bitable asscheek; the sun dappling over his bare back lit him up all golden and warm. He looked like he ought to be painted and hung in the Met, and also like Phil needed to get right back in there and give him a second lovebite on the other cheek, so he’d match.

Phil stopped dressing, his pants still hanging open and his undershirt half-on. He leaned down to nibble on Clint’s bottom lip, just for a minute, to fix the image in his mind to carry him through the day. Clint melted into him, all the leashed power of him gone pliant and sweet, and made a small, disappointed sound low in his throat when Phil finally pulled away.

“I know,” Phil said. “Believe me, I _know._ Me too. But…” he shrugged, then had to catch his pants before they fell off entirely and he just said to hell with global security and climbed right back into bed. He never felt like he got enough time with Clint, even though date night often turned into staying the night, then into coming by after work, then into “it’s late, the trains aren’t running, why don’t you just stay over again?”

(Jasper had rolled his eyes when Phil turned up in one of Clint’s slightly-too-tight suits for the third time in a week and said “just ask him for a drawer or something, Jesus.” Phil wasn’t going to ask, because that would be pushy, and also maybe because a tiny part of him thrilled at wearing Clint’s underwear. He did, however, have a mental checklist of the things he’d keep in a drawer at Clint’s, should the opportunity arise.)

“Yeah,” Clint said softly. “Duty calls. I get it.”

Phil allowed himself one more brush over Clint’s hair—all soft and fluffed up like a dandelion and almost unbearably cute, not that he’d say so out loud—and then forced himself to keep getting dressed. “This op wasn’t projected to heat up until next month,” he said. “Hopefully this is just a glitch, and I can wrap it up and still make dinner.”

“That would be great, babe, but don’t cut corners,” Clint said, sitting up and pulling the sheet, disappointingly, over his lap. “You home safe is more important than you home fast.”

“I promise,” Phil said. He didn’t bother with a tie; it was Sunday. Plus, the tie he’d worn to dinner was still looped around Clint’s headboard, and he liked the way it looked there. “Either way, I’ll call you once I know how it’s shaking out.” He stepped into one of his shoes and searched around for the other, finally finding it wedged half under the dresser. He bent down for a last kiss. “Do something nice for yourself today,” he said. “You’ve been running hard the last couple weeks.”

Clint waved a lazy hand. “Netflix and chill isn’t as much fun alone,” he said. “I’ve got a list of stuff for the building to work through, it’s cool.”

“Okay,” Phil said. He made a last check: wallet, phone, keys, badge, sidearm. All there. “Talk to you soon, babe.” One more kiss, just a short one, and then he tore himself away and grouchily made his way in to SHIELD.

He was even grouchier three hours later, when he finally found a spare minute to call Clint.

“So apparently our analysts don’t know their asses from their eyeballs,” he said, “and they got the timeline completely wrong.”

“Aw, intel,” Clint said, sympathetic. “That sucks. So you gotta do that overseas gig now?”

Phil sighed. “They’re predicting at least ten days,” he said. “Clint, I’m so sorry, I know I promised I’d go to team dinner on Thursday—”

“Hey, no,” Clint said. “Babe. It’s fine, we’re all in the same line of work, you know? They’ll understand. We’ll catch it next time, all right? Just take care of yourself out there, come home safe.”

“I’ll do my best,” Phil promised, trying not to read too much into the way Clint talked about Phil coming home—like he wasn’t just talking about getting back to New York: like he was talking about coming home _to Clint_. It probably didn’t mean as much as Phil wanted it to. Clint had a heart the size of New York—look at the way he’d opened his home to Phil when Phil was drugged and delirious. Phil loved that generosity, but he had to be sure not to mistake it for more than it really was. “I just—thank you for understanding,” he said. “I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

“I’ll spend the time thinking up ways,” Clint said, with a dirty little chuckle that made Phil twitch in his tac pants.

“God, I can’t wait to hear them,” he said. He pictured Clint, padding around the apartment in bare feet with the hems of his jeans ragged from dragging on the ground, and cursed the entire Intelligence Analysis division. “I have to go,” he said. “I l—”

He cut himself off, his brain suddenly flashing into panic mode just in time to make his entire body lurch with adrenaline as he swallowed the word, and swerved the sentence back into safe territory. “I’m leaving in ten minutes,” he finished, and if his voice was kind of thready, well, the departure siren was going off in the background.

“Take care, baby,” Clint said. “Lucky’ll never forgive me if I let something happen to his new favorite.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint Lucky,” Phil said, his heart still hammering like he’d just escaped being shot. “Talk to you soon.”

He hung up the call and stood there for a moment, staring down at the contact photo of Clint still showing on the screen. Lucky had jumped up to lick his face just before the shutter went, and he was laughing helplessly, face scrunched up to avoid the dog slobber, half-obscured by a mass of tawny fur. It was a great picture. It made Phil’s chest squeeze with fondness every time he looked at it.

He was in so much trouble.

When Phil was seventeen, he’d fallen desperately in love. They’d met at band camp, because that was exactly the sort of dweeb Phil had been as a kid; she’d been a cello prodigy, whip-smart and funny and sweet, and Phil had thought the sun rose and set in her big brown eyes. They’d snuck around the whole summer, finding places to make out: in empty cabins, on the ropes course platforms, and once, notably, in the back of a rehearsal room behind a stand of tympani. They’d been stupidly happy throughout senior year, and then she’d broken up with him after graduation. It only made sense, really; she was headed to Julliard and Phil to the Army. He’d agreed with her logic and kissed her goodbye and quietly thrown away the notebook where he’d been figuring up how far an Army salary would go towards married housing and engagement rings.

Phil’d had relationships since, but he hadn’t fallen in love again until he’d opened his eyes in a dumpster and seen Clint Barton limned with celestial light.

(Of course, said light had been composed of equal parts street lamp and drug-induced visual hallucination, but the image was no less amazing.)

The point was, Phil had never been very good at moderation when his heart was involved. Hell, he was bad enough with his platonic relationships; he’d ended up in SHIELD in the first place because Marcus—Nick—had needed him. And that didn’t even include his hobbies—he had a storage unit full of carefully curated Captain America collectibles that he hadn’t told Clint about, yet, because Clint was _friends_ with Captain America and Phil was afraid it would make things awkward.

It was too soon for him to be this invested, Phil _knew_ it was too soon. They weren’t teenagers, after all, but grown men with demanding jobs and emotional baggage and logistical complications. But Clint was perfect for Phil in ways that he hadn’t even known he wanted, and the thought of losing him—of living without Clint’s smiles and texts and kisses, of never hearing him laugh or being wrapped in his arms again—made him feel cold and sick all over.

If Phil could just keep from scaring him off long enough, he thought they might really have a future. If Phil could just… not make it weird, for long enough for Clint to catch up to Phil’s reckless heart.

He didn’t think he could bear it if Clint ever looked at him with disgust.

The final warning siren started up, and Phil shoved his phone back into his pocket and ran for the jet.

* * *

                                                                                                    

Three weeks later, Phil was still in Mogadishu, and was seriously considering trying to hire a freelancer to kill the weapons dealer they were after, just so he could go home and _(see Clint)_ not have to share a hotel room with Jasper any longer. Jasper had been taking certain culinary risks that had yielded highly unsatisfactory digestive consequences, especially for anyone who had to share a bathroom with him. Plus, the walls in the hotel were thin and Jasper was a light sleeper; it was nearly impossible for Phil to find any privacy to call Clint, especially considering the seven-hour time difference. He had to make do with texts. Clint, who understood the special hell of a stakeout that wouldn’t end, tried his best to entertain. Phil took more comfort than he would have expected from the frequent pictures he sent, mainly of Lucky or of targets that had arrows stuck in them in various patterns.

(One of them was a heart. Phil might have saved that picture to a special folder on his phone called “July_email_backup.”)

Jasper had finally taken pity on Phil’s agitation (or, as he put it, his “sad-ass face”) and taken himself out to find lunch and take a walk. Phil, for the first time in far too long, was left in possession of the room, not currently on shift, and in a decent time window to call New York.

His heart sank as the phone rang and rang. Of course, Clint was a busy man; he might even be out on Avengers business, after all. Phil probably should have texted first, to make sure he was available to talk. Romantic surprise calls were for people who weren’t likely to get called out to save the planet at a moment’s notice.

Just before the point at which Clint’s voicemail would pick up, while Phil was trying to think of a message less pathetic to leave him than “I miss you so much, do you think you could send the Hulk to Somalia so I can come home?”, Phil heard a click and then a breathless, beautifully familiar voice.

“—cky, I swear to god, I—hello? Phil? I’m here, don’t hang up!”

“Hey,” Phil said softly, feeling himself relax all over, his spine slumping in relief. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Same,” Clint said, sounding tender and pleased. Phil felt better than he had in weeks.

They chatted desultorily about everything and nothing; Clint filled him in on the latest Avengers gossip and the news from around the building, while Phil complained about Jasper’s inadequacies as a roommate and the continued reluctance of Certain People to just get on with their evil plots already so they could get nice and arrested and Phil could go home. It was… _homey,_ talking to Clint; Phil was horny as hell, naturally—neither the hot water nor the privacy in the room were sufficient for more than the most perfunctory of, er, _self care_ — but even though they were talking about perfectly ordinary, non-sexy things, Phil felt warm and happy and connected, almost as though he were basking in some sort of afterglow.

It was probably kind of pathetic, getting so much out of a phone call, but Clint was just really good to talk to, okay?

Someone gave the all-clear knock on the door, then Phil heard the door open and Jasper came in, holding a bag redolent of coriander and cumin. “I brought you lunch,” he said.

“Is that Sitwell?” Clint asked. “Tell him hi, and I hope he learned his lesson about fresh fruit off of street carts.”

“Clint says hi, and he hopes you’re feeling better,” Phil said, feeling a lot more kindly disposed toward Jasper than he had that morning.

Clint laughed, warm and rough, raising goosebumps on the back of Phil’s neck as though he was standing in the room. “Well, I guess that means you have to get back to it, huh?”

Phil was reluctant, but it was true. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer it’ll be, you know how it is, but I hope...”

“Yeah,” Clint said. Phil thought he sounded a little wistful. “Me too, babe. But be careful, okay?”

“That goes for you, too,” Phil said. “Just because I’m not in town doesn’t mean I don’t have a Google alert set for ‘Hawkeye jumping off things.’”

Clint chuckled again. “Touché,” he said. “Okay, sounds fair. I will if you will.”

“It’s a deal.” They were both quiet for a moment; Phil knew he should get off the phone, but it seemed impossible to give up the sound of Clint’s quiet breathing in his ear.

Behind him, Jasper cleared his throat, and Phil sighed. “I’m sorry, it’s about to be our shift in—” he looked at his watch, and was surprised by how much time had passed. “—god, twelve minutes, so I’d better go eat before we have to get back to it.”

“Yeah,” Clint said, reluctant. “Go be Agent Coulson for a while. I, ah, I’ll talk to you soon?”

“Soon as I can once I get back,” Phil promised. “Take care. I l—look forward to seeing you.”

“Ditto,” Clint said, not seeming to have noticed Phil’s near slip. “Bye, babe.”

“Bye,” Phil said.

Neither of them hung up.

The ten-minute warning for Phil’s shift time buzzed.

“Okay, okay,” Clint said. “I’m really gonna go now.” There was another pause, and then Phil heard a crash in the background.

“Shit, shit, sorry, that was the coffee table—hey! What did I say about—” the call cut off with an affronted hiss of static; Phil wasn’t sure if it was bad signal or just whatever had just befallen Clint’s living room.

“Bye,” he said pathetically, to the empty line, then allowed himself to look at Clint’s contact photo again, just for a minute.

“Oh my god,” Jasper said.

“What?” Phil demanded, shoving his phone in his pocket.

“Your face, for one thing,” Jasper said. “You should see yourself, Phil. If I didn’t think you’d smother me in my sleep, I’d be taking a picture right now for the bulletin board in the senior agent break room. But mostly, I cannot believe you just did what I think I just heard you do.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Phil said, not meeting his eyes.

“Uh-huh,” Jasper said. “So you _aren’t_ playing love chicken with Hawkeye?”

Phil stared at him. “I’m sorry, did you say _love chicken?”_

Jasper rolled his eyes, handing him a takeout container. “You heard me.”

Phil took his lunch. “That isn’t a thing.”

“That thing where you keep almost telling him you love him, but you stop yourself every time because he hasn’t said it yet so you’re afraid if you say it first you’ll look desperate and clingy?”

Phil felt his face heat. “It’s only been a few months, Jaz. Less if you count times we were both on missions. It’s too soon for that.”

“I have a million reasons why it isn’t, but I’ll just list three,” Jasper said, counting obnoxiously on his fingers. “One: every time you’re both in town you spend more nights at his place than yours, and it’s been going on since before Thanksgiving. Two: you’re subscribed to every Avengers-related listserv, newsletter and intelligence alert on the planet so you can check on him when he’s on a mission. Three: the goo-goo eyes you were making at your phone when I came in.”

“I was _not,_ ” Phil said. “I’ve never ‘made goo-goo eyes’ in my life.”

“You make goo-goo eyes at your car every time you open the door, don’t front,” Jasper said, picking up his spoon and taking a satisfied bite of his stew.

“…that’s different,” Phil muttered, stirring his lunch around. “Anyway, I just… I don’t want to fuck this up, okay? It’s been really good so far. I don’t want to, to freak him out by getting all weird.”

“You. Are worried that you’re going to be too weird. For _Clint Barton_ ,” Jasper said. “The man who fights aliens with a bow and arrow while wearing a purple leotard. _That_ Clint Barton.”

“He doesn’t wear the purple anymore,” Phil said sullenly.

“That’s beside the point, Phil.”

“Look,” Phil said. “Maybe I’m being too careful, but… I really like him, Jaz.” He poked at his stew. “I want it to work out.”

“And I want that for you,” Jasper said. “Just, look, love chicken never works out the way you want, okay? I know what I’m talking about. Someone’s got to say it first, right? And maybe he’s just as nervous as you are. Hell, he’s divorced; maybe he’s _more_ nervous than you are.”

“Apparently it was fairly amicable,” Phil said, pushing back the stir of queasiness he got sometimes when he thought too hard about Clint’s exes. Most of the ones Phil knew about were both Avengers and women, qualifications Phil was rather noticeably lacking. He knew that the past wasn’t an exact predictor of the future—and they were exes for a reason, after all—but he still couldn’t help feeling like his long-term chances would be better if he were a little more Clint’s type.

“Amicable, schmamicable,” Jasper said. “Still leaves a mark.”

“…schmamicable?”

“There’s no talking to you when you’re like this,” Jasper said, exasperated. “Just think about what I said while you eat your lunch. We’re on in five.”

Phil applied himself to his stew, feeling sheepish. It wasn’t that Jasper was _wrong_ , necessarily. It was just that Phil was kind of afraid to depend on him being right. The thing was, you could talk all you wanted about following your heart, but Phil’s heart wanted too much, too soon; it would drag him into all kinds of trouble if he let it. Much better, really, to follow his head. And yet…

“I’ll think about it,” he said softly, as they were bundling up their trash.

“Good,” Jasper said. “You’re still first on the bugs, though.”

Phil sighed, settling himself at the rickety desk and pulling on the headphones to monitor the audio surveillance feed.

Maybe Jasper had a point. Clint had asked him to team dinner, after all, which was kind of like the superhero equivalent to inviting him for Sunday roast at his grandmother’s house. Clint loved the Avengers, and valued their opinions. If Phil could get on their good side… maybe he could stop having anxiety dreams where Clint broke up with him and Phil was destined to die alone surrounded by collectibles.

When he got back, Phil thought, he was going to prove himself. He’d be a perfect boyfriend, make friends with Clint’s team, and then maybe he’d feel safe enough to let himself say the words that crowded up behind his teeth every time he talked to Clint.

He wondered how the Avengers felt about baked goods.

                                                                                                    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI, the next chapter is quite long, so it'll take a bit longer to get edited and posted. Plus side: the Explicit rating is earned at last!
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who has read and left feedback!


	3. One Weird Trick To Get Rid of Jet Lag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil just spent 14 hours on a jet and he's been wearing the same clothes for two days. He wants three things: a shower, some food, and to see Clint.
> 
> You can't always get what you want, but sometimes, if you're lucky, your boyfriend will make sure it happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My friends. This chapter is like 75% smut. You see that E rating up top? That's basically 99% all coming from here.
> 
> If you don't want to read the smut, you can skip from the part where Phil wakes up to.... pretty much a couple paragraphs before the end of the chapter.

A few days later, the mark finally made his move, and was apprehended with the sort of commendable alacrity you saw in agents who were about two weeks past “over all this shit” and well into “calamitous intent.” Phil barely had time to shoot Clint a quick text to let him know he was on his way home before boarding the 14-hour flight back to New York. He spent the first few hours completing his mission report, then downed an MRE, wadded his jacket into a makeshift pillow, and did his best to get some sleep.

The bump of the landing woke him, and he gathered his things and shuffled off the jet, one more bleary agent in a string of them. His face was itchy with stubble and he’d been wearing the same field gear for twenty-seven hours straight; he felt exhausted and disgusting, with that peculiar greasy, slightly dehydrated feeling that came from spending too long on a plane. 

It was only about suppertime in New York, and Phil didn’t have to be anywhere until his debrief the next day. He wanted food, then a shower, then a night’s sleep in a room that did not contain Jasper Sitwell; maybe then he’d be human enough to make an effort and could talk Clint into a lunch date before he had to go back to SHIELD. He was so busy planning it—possibly he’d have his shower _before_ his food—that he didn’t even notice when he walked into something solid, warm, and purple.

“Aw, hey, babe,” Clint said, his voice soft and happy and miraculous. “You okay?”

A warm, rough hand cupped Phil’s cheek, and he blinked in jetlagged confusion. “Clint,” he said.

“That’s me,” Clint agreed. He was wearing worn jeans and a purple hoodie, and there was the pink line of a healing cut across the bridge of his nose. He looked comfortable and perfect, and Phil had the random, absurd thought that he wished he could shrink down small enough that Clint could just put him in his pocket and carry him home.

“When did you get here?” Phil shook his head a little, trying to jar his thoughts into some sort of order. It was supposed to be shower and food, then sleep, and _then_ Clint; Phil wanted—he didn’t want to come straight home and inflict his post-mission self on Clint. He wasn’t sure how long you had to be dating a guy to put up with post-mission funk, but he was pretty sure it was longer than six weeks. Ten if you counted the mission.

(Phil totally counted the mission.)

“You said you were on your way, so I sweet-talked Director Hill into giving me a base pass so I could give you a ride home.” Clint slid his hand to the back of Phil’s neck, the warmth seeping in to ease the ache where he’d been sleeping propped against the side of the jet.

“I’m gross, though,” Phil pointed out. “I smell. And I didn’t shave. Or change. I can’t kiss you when I smell.” This was an important consideration; it wasn’t fair of Clint to just be there all kissable when Phil couldn’t kiss him yet.

“Oh, darlin’, you’re zonked as hell.” Clint eased Phil’s bags off his shoulder and wound one strong arm around his waist. Phil let himself sag into the half-embrace. He could have roused himself if he’d had to, but having Clint there just felt… good. Safe and warm and welcoming, and Phil decided that Clint went on missions enough himself that he’d probably understand and forgive Phil’s less-than-ideal dating condition. He leaned his head on Clint’s shoulder. It was a nice shoulder for leaning. Phil closed his eyes, breathing in Clint’s smell, beeswax and leather and a trace of cologne.

“Don’t go to sleep just yet,” Clint said. “Come on. I even got us a car, we can take you straight home.”

Phil nodded, and let Clint hustle him through the halls of SHIELD and into a waiting car—one of Stark’s, he thought distantly—where he managed to get his seatbelt on before he slumped back over against Clint’s shoulder and let himself doze until they got to his apartment. Clint carried his bags up and stood patiently by while Phil tried to remember which of his keys did what. 

Clint had been to his apartment, of course, but they usually hung out at Clint’s; Clint’s place was just nicer, somehow, more lived-in and comfortable, plus it was easier for taking care of Lucky. The air in Phil’s apartment was stale, everything covered with dust, his lone houseplant looking half-dead again since he hadn’t had time to refill the watering bulb before he’d left. At Clint’s, the kitchen would smell like coffee and Lucky would bound up to the door to meet them, tags jingling with his lopsided gait.

“SHIELD should really send someone to house-sit for you guys when they send you out like that,” Clint said, looking around with a slight frown.

Phil shrugged. “I think you might be able to get that? I just don’t bother.” He forced himself to stand up straight, the side of his body chilled where he’d been pressed against Clint. “Ugh. God. What time’s it?”

“Quarter to eight,” Clint said. “You eat?”

“MRE on the jet,” Phil said. “Um, this morning? Last night?” He made a halfhearted gesture that ran out of steam midway through. “Sometime. It wasn’t very good. Hawkins got the last cheese tortellini.”

“That bastard,” Clint said, wrinkling his nose in sympathy. “Those are the best ones.”

“So. Yeah. But, um…” Phil trailed off. He’d had a plan. Oh! “I need to eat,” he told Clint. “And also shower. But not at the same time.”

Clint smiled at him and leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s team up. You go shower and I’ll fix you some food, okay? Then you can eat when you get out.”

Phil nodded. That made sense. Teamwork. “But you too,” he said. “I mean, food. For you. There should be stuff in the freezer. We can eat together. I mean, um, if you want.” He was starting to feel queasy from some combination of fatigue and hunger, and it was making it hard to think. 

“That sounds great, babe,” Clint said, and darted in to kiss him again before turning him around bodily and giving him a little push toward the bathroom. “You go shower and I’ll take care of it.” 

Phil shuffled into the bathroom and stripped with clumsy fingers, dropping his clothes into a pile on the floor and kicking them into a corner to be dealt with later. A glance in the mirror revealed red eyes, patchy stubble, a puffy face; he looked like ten miles of rough road. He cranked the water all the way to hot and brushed his teeth while it warmed. 

The taste of “SupaMint” (whatever that was supposed to be) perked him up a little, and he drank three cups of water from the tap before adjusting the water from “lobster-boiling” to “just shy of scalding” and climbing in, unable to hold back a groan as the hot water sheeted over his aching body. He got as much of himself under the spray as would fit and allowed himself to just stay there for a little while while the spray washed away mission grit and sweat and plane-smell, swirling grayish-brown down the drain. 

Eventually, he either needed to start moving or fall asleep standing up, so he started actually washing himself. It was good to be home; the smells of his toiletries were comforting and familiar, his shower actually big enough to use without banging his funny bone on the side, and even better, there was no Jasper just outside to hear if he, er, made noise.

Not that he needed to do that, not when Clint was _right there_. 

That thought led to other thoughts—optimistic, sexy thoughts—and Phil found a burst of energy to make _extra_ sure that he was completely, thoroughly clean. Just in case. It never hurt to be prepared, after all.

The water started to cool a little, and Phil gave himself a final rinse and shut off the water. He shivered when he got out of the shower, goosebumps rising as the cooler air hit his wet skin. He toweled his hair mostly-dry, then rubbed the towel briskly over the rest of him before realizing that he’d neglected to bring anything in to change into. Oh, well. It wasn’t like Clint hadn’t seen it all before. 

He wrapped the damp towel around his waist and opened the door, nearly walking right into Clint, who was standing at the threshold with one hand raised as if to knock. He gave Phil a pretty obvious once-over that was likely about checking for mission-related damage, but was also covetous enough to pass for lust. Maybe it was both; Clint was an efficient sort of guy.

“Feeling better?” Clint asked, reaching out to rest a hand on the arch of Phil’s hip, just above the towel.

Phil nodded. Clint’s touch felt so good. He’d really missed Clint’s hands. And Clint’s… self. Just. Clint.

“Good,” Clint said. “Food’s about ready; you wanna go change?”

Phil didn’t really want to do anything but eat and then lose consciousness. “I’m fine,” he said, and started down the hall toward the delicious food-smells that were wafting from the kitchen.

“Phil,” Clint said. “It’s too cold in here for that, God, what is your thermostat even set to.”

“I wasn’t here.” Phil shrugged. 

“You’re here now, though,” Clint said. “Go, sit, let me get it.” He steered Phil to a seat at his table, the stacks of mail that usually lived there temporarily relocated to the far end, and Phil sat obligingly while Clint went back into the bedroom and emerged with a red velour quilted bathrobe that had been a gag gift from Fury and that Phil mainly kept in his closet ironically. He hadn’t even realized Clint had seen it. Of course, Clint _was_ notably sharp-eyed. Professionally.

“Put this on before you catch your death,” Clint said, draping the robe around his shoulders and then prowling the circumference of the living room until he located the thermostat, which he started fiddling with. Phil flailed around until he got his arms through the sleeves and most of the body of the robe draped around him, more or less the way it was meant to go; it was quite nice, actually. Warm, and the satin lining felt good against his skin. He hoped he didn’t look too much like Hugh Hefner.

Phil zoned out a little, idly rubbing one velvety cuff, then startled back into full awareness when Clint put a plate and a glass down in front of him; rice and a chicken and vegetable stir-fry, and ice water with one of the bendy straws Phil kept around (for times he’d been punched in the mouth or had dental work done) stuck in, already bent to the perfect drinking angle. It smelled fantastic, and Phil’s stomach growled loud enough that Clint looked over from where he was putting his own plate down on the table; suddenly Phil was absolutely ravenous.

“Dig in, babe, it sounds like you’re starving,” Clint said, setting a few condiments on the table between them: salt and pepper, sriracha, soy sauce. 

“You didn’t have to go to so much trouble,” Phil said, picking up his fork. “I was just gonna nuke something.” He shoved a giant bite into his mouth and nearly moaned. “’S really good though, thank you.”

“‘Course I didn’t have to,” Clint said, fidgeting with the condiments a little more before finally sitting down. “I wanted to. Why would I let you come home from nearly a month in the field to a cold house and a Hungry Man dinner when we could have this instead?”

Phil’s whole body prickled with warmth. Clint sounded totally sincere, like he was the one getting the best of the deal. Clint was like that, though; so endlessly generous, warm-hearted and beautiful and genuine. One of the few really good people in the world.

“You’re amazing,” he told Clint. “I don’t know how I ever got so lucky.”

Clint turned pink, then recovered a little and winked at him. “Well, if I remember right, I think it started when you got roofied by mad scientists,” he said.

Phil groaned around a mouthful of broccoli. “Okay, I admit it, I walked into that one,” he said as soon as he’d swallowed.

“You really kinda did.” Clint grinned at him, mischievous and fond, and Phil decided maybe it was worth some residual embarrassment over the whole incident to see the way Clint’s eyes twinkled with suppressed laughter at the memory.

Phil was too hungry and tired to talk much more, and Clint seemed happy to stay quiet, watching Phil eat with a satisfied expression and occasionally playing footsie under the table. After they’d polished off the stir fry, he brought out Phil’s shortbread cookie stash and a bowl of mixed berries sprinkled with sugar. They had the telltale smushiness of having been frozen and thawed—Phil kept the bag around for making smoothies sometimes—but the makeshift dessert still tasted good, and the pride on Clint’s face would have made it worth eating anyway, even if it hadn’t.

Phil let his mind drift, thinking happy thoughts of getting Clint naked in his bed and maybe letting him rub off against that ridiculous robe, when a nearby clatter made him jump, jerking his head up. He’d dozed off sitting up and dropped his fork.

“You okay?” Clint had apparently been washing the dishes; he’d whirled around from the sink, brandishing a dish scrubber as though he’d been about to use it to defend the apartment from fork-dropping threats.

Phil scrubbed his hands over his face. “Yeah, sorry, I just… I’m afraid I’m fading.”

“I should go,” Clint said, reluctant. “Let you get to sleep.”

“Oh.” Phil tried not to sound disappointed. “Sure. Um, are you free in the morning maybe? We could get brunch or something.”

Clint narrowed his eyes, watching Phil for a moment with his distinctive intensity. Clint had a way of looking at a person that made you feel like he knew everything about you. “Would you rather I stayed over?” he asked carefully. “It’s fine if not, I know you just got back, but if you’d like company….”

“Please,” Phil said at once. “Yes. I mean, I’m probably not up for much tonight, but in the morning I should be…” he made a vague gesture, and considered “up for it” and “energetic” before finishing it “…better rested.”

Clint smiled at him. “That sounds great, Phil,” he said. “After all this time, honestly, I’m just happy to get to sleep beside you again. Why don’t you go get in bed and I’ll join you as soon as I finish up in here?”

Phil stood, biting back a groan; his muscles had stiffened up again. He crossed the kitchen and leaned against Clint’s broad back for a moment, resting his hands on Clint’s hipbones. Clint, his hands still buried in a sink full of suds, twisted his head around for a kiss.

“Don’t be too long?” Phil murmured. “I don’t want to fall asleep before you get there.”

“Promise,” Clint said, and Phil kissed the warm thin skin on the side of his neck and plodded down the hall to the bedroom. He turned down the bed, happy that at least he’d changed the sheets just before the mission; they were clean, if a little stale from disuse. He shrugged out of the robe—Clint had apparently cranked the heat with little regard for Phil’s utility bills, because the room was gloriously warm now—and slid between the sheets without bothering to put any clothes on. He forced himself to set an alarm; he wanted enough time before his debrief to have a meal with Clint when both of them were actually fully awake. He leaned back against his headboard, worried that if he let himself lie down all the way he’d fall asleep before Clint got there.

Fortunately and unsurprisingly, Clint was as good as his word. He came down the hall humming a little under his breath, the little pleasant snatches of melody that Phil had only heard a few times, when Clint was especially relaxed and happy. He grinned when he entered the room and saw Phil, his handsome, weathered face creasing with it; Phil wanted to kiss the smile lines at the corners of his bright eyes.

“Get in here before I pass out,” he said, and Clint laughed, snapping a theatrically incorrect salute while shucking his clothes. 

“As soon as I can,” he said. “I promise, I can’t wait to get in there with you, babe.” He looked up and down Phil’s bare chest. “Damn, but you’re a sight for sore eyes.” He paused, hands on the waistband of his underwear. “Naked okay with you?”

Phil gave him his best “are you even kidding me with this nonsense” look. “I think I can handle it.”

“Heh.” Clint pulled them off, tossing them into Phil’s hamper without looking, and Phil tried not to look too closely at why the casual domesticity of it—the assumption that it was fine to throw his laundry in with Phil’s—made a surge of triumph rise in his chest. Clint slid between the sheets, wriggling around until he was comfortable, then held out an arm, looking up at Phil hopefully. “C’mere?” 

Phil snapped off the bedside lamp and moved into the offered spot, resting his head in the hollow of Clint’s shoulder. Clint made a happy noise and curled his arm around Phil, pressing him snug against Clint’s side.

“ _There_ you are,” Clint said, pressing a kiss into Phil’s hair. “Finally.”

Phil sighed, every muscle in his body seeming to relax at the same time. Clint was broad and warm and solid beside him, his arm at Phil’s back strong and reassuring. It was the best Phil’s body had felt for weeks. “I missed this,” he murmured, turning his head a little so his lips weren’t mashed into Clint’s pec. “Missed you.” 

Clint squeezed him, kissing him again. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too, babe. I’m glad you’re home.” His warm, callused hand stroked up and down Phil’s spine. “Get some sleep,” he said softly. “We’ll continue the welcome party in the morning.”

Phil closed his eyes, every bit of him thrumming with contentment, and fell into sleep like a great ocean. When he woke, it was slow and easy, like waking almost never was in the life of a SHIELD agent; no alarm, no blaring phone, just the gradual awareness of light behind his eyelids, pressure in his bladder, and a warm naked body pressed full length against him, back to back.

He was home at last, in his own bed, feeling Clint Barton’s magnificent ass snugged up to his own. He was almost afraid to open his eyes, half-convinced he’d discover he’d slept through or forgotten his alarm and was missing his debrief.

He peeked through the barest possible slit of open eye, and sagged in relief when he realized it was only nine-thirty.

“Mmph?” Clint stirred, probably alerted by Phil’s back tensing when he’d thought he was late. “W’zat?”

“It’s okay, Clint,” Phil said softly. “Bathroom.” 

Clint made a sleepy noise of assent and flopped over, burying his face in the pillow and dragging half the covers off Phil, wrapping them around himself like a burrito. Heaven help him, Phil just looked at the tuft of blond hair sticking out from the duvet, wiggled his toes in the cooler room air, and thought privately that Clint was adorable. Maybe their line of work recalibrated a person, so that “unguarded” became the new “sexy,” something like calves being erotic in Victorian times because you hardly ever saw them.

Of course, some people just had erotic calves. 

Phil ran an affectionate hand over the curve of Clint’s leg through the covers and wandered into the bathroom, not bothering with clothes; Clint had to have turned the heat over 70 the night before. Plus, well, Phil was optimistic that his nudity would be a strategic asset once Clint woke up all the way. 

He added a bit of extra freshening up and an earlier-than-normal toothbrushing to his normal waking-up routine, then went from the bathroom to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. He knew from experience that Clint slept hard when he was somewhere secure, so it wasn’t surprising to find Clint still unmoved in bed on Phil’s return. Phil smiled, then slid back under the paltry inches of cover remaining on his side of the bed and spooned up behind Clint. He nuzzled up to the tempting spot at the curve where Clint’s neck met his shoulder, brushing the soft skin with his morning stubble but not giving in to the temptation of Clint’s oh-so-nibblable earlobe beyond giving it a tiny kiss.

Clint sighed, a long, content sound that made Phil’s chest light with good feelings. He remembered the first time he’d seen Clint asleep, sneaking down the loft stairs in Clint’s too-snug dove gray Armani, his gut churning with humiliation and dread as he contemplated waking Clint up. It wasn’t that he’d thought Clint would mock him; he’d known Clint would be kind, but that would just make things worse. Phil had hardly been able to look at Clint as he hurriedly explained the situation, borrowed the phone, and fled into the morning like his borrowed pants were on fire.

He’d been harboring something of a crush on Hawkeye since the first time he’d seen the man shoot, and he’d possibly allowed himself some pleasant recreational musings on the topic of how they might meet, some day. Phil was always well-dressed and impressive in the scenarios he imagined. Suave, even.

It was hard to imagine a situation _less_ impressive than getting drugged by AIM in the middle of his own undercover sting and winding up high as a kite, in Hawkeye’s dumpster, wearing a stripper’s pants. Phil still wasn’t sure what god, alien, or extra-planar entity he has or will piss off, but the whole situation was too ridiculous to be anything else than some sort of revenge, karmic or otherwise.

It was an outright miracle that Clint had even given him a chance, after all that. But he _had_ , and Phil was determined not to waste it. He’d been given the opportunity of a lifetime, and he wouldn’t let it slip through his fingers.

He kissed Clint’s ear again, his neck, the curve of his bare shoulder. He felt like he’d been gone for years, his libido rapidly rousing at the velvety brush of Clint’s skin. The touch of his own hand in a lukewarm, dribbling shower halfway across the world was no match for this, for being safe and warm in his own bed, shifting his hips the tiniest bit to enjoy the way Clint’s ass felt against his plumping cock.

Clint shifted, pushing back into Phil’s body and sighing. Phil took that as a vote in favor of the Wake Clint Up Sexily And Have Orgasms Before Brunch plan, so he ran his hand down Clint’s side, letting his fingers fan out enough to brush a nipple on the way down.

“Mmm,” Clint hummed, wriggling back a little more. They’d actually talked about this, after the third time they’d spent the night in the same bed; it was something Phil loved to do, but not everyone was into it. Fortunately, Clint felt that Phil’s caresses were a much better start to the day than an alarm, and had given Phil blanket permission to “have at it, babe” any time it was convenient; as long as they had fallen asleep together, he said, he wouldn’t startle at the touch.

Phil pushed the covers down, bending to kiss the defined muscles of Clint’s shoulder. Clint’s face was soft with sleep, muscles twitching a little as Phil touched him, lovely like an oil painting in the morning light. Phil kept stroking his flank as he kissed his neck and shoulder, letting his stubble brush against the skin and watching raptly as Clint sighed and hummed and pushed into the touches. Clint was starting to rouse, not asleep but not really awake, either; Phil tried to build the intensity of his touches as slowly as he could, wanting to keep Clint floating in a half-dream where everything was warm and safe and pleasurable.

Phil let his fingers skate down the cut of muscle at Clint’s hip, combing softly through the sandy hair at the base of his cock before running his fingers up Clint’s length. Clint was partially hard already, from morning and Phil’s attentions. Phil shivered with delight when he felt Clint’s cock filling further under his touch, the blood pulsing under thin, hot skin. He gave in to temptation and took Clint in a loose fist, just barely touching him, and gave him a slow pull that finished with a gentle squeeze to the head.

Clint sucked in a breath, and the muscles Phil was snuggled up against tensed for a few seconds, then relaxed as Clint’s eyes fluttered open, a sleep-blurred smile creasing his face.

“Heeeeeey, baby,” he said, his voice still thick. “God, I missed you.”

Phil buried his face in the crook of Clint’s shoulder, breathing in the smell of him. His heart ached with how fucking _happy_ he was, how good he felt. He could feel words rising, crowding his throat, things that weren’t appropriate to say yet: _if I had my way, you’d never have to miss me again. All I could think about the whole time was how much I wanted to be with you. I’ve never felt like this about anyone before. I want you forever; I’d do anything to keep you._

_I’m so fucking in love with you._

“At least you didn’t have to share a hotel room with Agent Sitwell,” he said, punctuating it with kisses. “He’s got ears like a bat. I missed you like crazy and I couldn’t even jerk off to that picture you sent me.” 

The picture in question was a shirtless mirror selfie, taken in classic hookup-app style except that Lucky had apparently jumped into frame at the last second, and Clint’s expression had been captured halfway between “exaggerated sexy smolder” and “dog-related imminent disaster.” Phil loved it unreasonably.

Clint snorted a laugh, shuffling around in bed until he was on his back, looking up at Phil with a sunny smile. “If that’s your best material, I’ve obviously got some work to do,” he said. “I swear, I can do better.” 

Phil tried to look skeptical, but was pretty sure it didn’t come out right. He was too relaxed to do the eyebrow properly. “Do much better and I might give myself a friction burn,” he said. 

Clint leered at him playfully. “See, now you’ve given me a _target,_ ” he said. “You know how I am with those.”

“I always enjoy watching an expert at the peak of their skill,” Phil said, and then the world was whirling around him as Clint reached up and heaved and flipped them over, his acrobat’s grace effortlessly deployed, and settled heavily atop Phil, his hips nestled between Phil’s splayed thighs.

“Well then, Agent Coulson,” Clint said, his eyes flashing with mischief. “Observe.” His expression was playful and a little wicked, and _happy;_ Phil didn’t think anyone had ever been so happy to be with him before. 

Clint ran his hands up and down Phil’s body, the calluses raising goosebumps in their wake. Phil had slept with a lot of people with gun calluses before, but never anyone with hands like Clint’s, roughened in mysterious patterns from not only gun grip and trigger but bowstring, parallel bars, parkour. Phil loved Clint’s hands, the strength and flexibility and heat of them, their careful touch, gentle or rough by turns but never hurtful, never thoughtless. 

Clint seemed determined to touch every bit of him, waking up his skin inch by inch; he neither lingered in nor avoided erogenous zones, just giving them the same focused attention he gave Phil’s arms or his ribs. Phil couldn’t stop watching his face, softly smiling mouth and bright intent eyes. Clint looked like he was inspecting a precious artifact or something; like touching Phil was something for _Clint’s_ benefit, instead of a way to work Phil up into an erotic frenzy.

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” Clint said, and Phil felt his face heat. He… he was in good shape, he knew—he was an active field agent, after all, whose life might depend on it—and he cleaned up well, but…

“I wanna put my mouth all over you,” Clint continued, and Phil’s train of thought fizzled out in a haze of searing lust. “Can I, babe?”

Phil swallowed hard. “Be my guest,” he said, reaching up to cup Clint’s cheek. It was smoother than he would have expected; he dimly remembered, the night before, that it had been like satin when Clint had picked him up. Clint had shaved, like he was picking Phil up for a date and not to take him home to collapse from jet lag. Phil didn’t know what to do with the knowledge that Clint had taken the trouble.

He looked up into Clint’s eyes. “Whatever you want,” he said, and Clint’s face turned sly and smug and anticipatory for a second before he was swooping down to nibble at Phil’s earlobe, making him shiver.

“I want a lot of stuff,” he said, his lips tracing over Phil’s carotid artery, over his rising pulse. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it while you’ve been gone.”

“God, I know,” Phil groaned, threading his fingers through Clint’s thick hair as Clint’s mouth moved over his collarbone and down to his chest. “I’m sorry it took so long.”

Clint licked over Phil’s nipple, teasing it with his tongue until it stood upright. “Like I said, these things take as long as they take,” he said. “I don’t begrudge. But I’m glad it’s over now.” He moved over to the other nipple to repeat the process, and Phil arched into his mouth, shivering with pleasure. “I just wanna make you feel good.”

“You are,” Phil assured him, his hands clutching at Clint, one in his hair and one on the smooth, broad slope of his back. “God! You do, so much. Every time.”

Clint lifted his head, smiling shyly up at Phil from where he’d been nipping delicately along Phil’s abs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Phil echoed, sliding his hand down to trace the soft crinkled skin at the corner of Clint’s eye.

“Awesome,” Clint said happily, and scooted down farther, his chest dragging along Phil’s cock in an incidental but still amazing-feeling way. “Oh, before I forget—the mission. You get any fluid exposure since last time we talked?”

“Nope,” Phil said. “All distance work, this time; we’re good from my end.” He spared a moment to be pleased, once again, that Clint’s job meant that he understood the need to constantly re-negotiate safe sex boundaries after missions. It was one of the reasons Phil had stopped dating civilians; it was hard to find a cover story that could accommodate both frequent multi-week business trips and the need to wait for yet another round of STI testing to come back, not because you’d cheated on them, but because you’d been exposed to bodily fluids at work. 

“Awesome,” Clint said again. “That makes things easier.” He waggled his eyebrows at Phil, making him chuckle.

Really, Clint was unreasonably adorable considering how strong and combat-trained he was. It was no wonder Phil had thought he was an angel that time. 

Phil was expecting Clint to go for a blowjob—he gave head with commendable enthusiasm and skill—but he contented himself with kissing a soft line down Phil’s shaft before moving to suck a little love bite into the top of his inner thigh. Phil spread his legs farther apart, trying to make room, his skin prickling with heat at the thought of walking around at work later with the marks of Clint’s mouth tender and present under his clothes. His cock throbbed, and Clint moved over to make a matching mark on the other thigh.

“I want to preface this by saying that I’m attracted to you as a complete person,” Clint said. “But damn, I’m glad you never skip leg day.”

Phil laughed loudly, caught off-guard by it. Clint grinned up at him for a moment before moving back down to mouth at his balls, until Phil’s trailing-off laughter collided with a gasp to form a peculiar sort of hiccup. It wasn’t in the least dignified, but Phil decided not to care. Clint certainly didn’t seem to mind. He played with Phil’s balls like he was trying to decide which one was his favorite, rolling them gently, sucking and stroking as they drew up tighter and Phil got harder. When Clint pulled back to rest his cheek against Phil’s thigh, Phil felt his breath against the wet skin and trembled with it.

“So,” Clint said, sounding mostly conversational but also a little nervous. “When I said I wanted to lick you all over…”

“Yeah?” Phil wasn’t quite sure where Clint was going with this. Did he want Phil to turn over so he could start again on Phil’s back? That’d be fine, if that was what Clint wanted. Phil might die of trying not to hump the sheets, but at least he’d die happy.

Clint’s face was already flushed, but Phil thought he got a little pinker. “It’s fine if you don’t want to,” he said. “I know some people don’t. But, um.” He traced a warm line with his finger, down from just below Phil’s balls, over his perineum and between his cheeks, to rest right over his hole. “I really like it, so.” 

Phil felt like he’d been dipped in boiling water and then thrown in a snowbank, his blood not sure if it should go to his face or his cock. He was _really glad_ he’d been optimistic in his hygiene choices since the night before. “I, uh. I haven’t. Before. But I’m not… _opposed_. If you want to.”

Clint looked up again, his smile this time a little feral, gleaming with teeth. “Oh, I _want_ to,” he rumbled. “You have no idea. Been thinking of it ever since I _met_ you, feels like. That ass of yours, Jesus.” He bent down and nipped the swell of one cheek. “It makes my mouth water.”

Phil made a noise that was definitely not a whimper, but a manly moan of pleasure. “D-don’t let me stop you,” he managed. “Indulge.”

Clint leaned up, reaching around Phil to grab one of the pillows from the head of the bed, and lifted Phil’s hips to shove it underneath him, tilting his pelvis at an angle.

To make Phil’s ass more accessible. So he could eat Phil out. _God_. Phil wondered, for a feverish moment, if he’d actually woken up at all, or if he was still asleep on the quinjet and everything that had happened since was an MRE-and-jet-lag-induced dream.

Then Clint cupped one of Phil’s cheeks in each of his big, strong hands, pulled them apart, and licked the entire length of skin from hole to balls with a broad, wet tongue, and Phil stopped wondering. He’d never felt anything like _that_ before; no raw material for the subconscious to build on.

“Just relax, baby,” Clint said. “Relax and lemme take care of you.”

“You’ve been taking care of me ever since I got home,” Phil protested. “Shouldn’t it be your turn now?”

“Oh, believe me, you’re doing me a favor,” Clint said, rubbing his cheek against Phil’s thigh. “God. This is exactly what I want to be doing right now, okay? So as long as it’s cool with you…”

“I—if that’s what you want,” Phil said. “If you’re sure.”

Clint kissed him, a sweet press of closed lips that would have been almost innocent if it wasn’t on the straining tendon of Phil’s splayed-open thigh. “I’m _so_ sure.”

Phil tried to relax back into the bed. He felt exposed, his legs spread wide and Clint’s head right there, Clint’s mouth—but it was exciting, too, exciting and new. “Okay,” he said, swallowing hard. “Sorry. Okay.”

Clint hummed, and then licked him again, and for the next few minutes Phil’s concentration narrowed to trying not to buck or kick himself out of Clint’s grasp. Clint’s tongue was as strong and skilled as the rest of his body, and he used it to great effect, alternating soft wet strokes with tight spirals and tiny flickers, moving between long licks and focused attention. Phil had never felt anything like it. He’d been fingered before, naturally, and fucked on occasion, but nobody he’d been with had ever wanted _this,_ and Phil hadn’t known enough to want it and ask. It was somehow fitting, he thought distantly. Everything was different with Clint, better; it was only right for sex to be different and better too. Because Clint was more generous, he wanted more, he wanted to take care of Phil, and Phil—Phil lo—Phil cared for him, helplessly and deeply, cared for him so much it was frightening sometimes.

Clint firmed his tongue and plunged it _inside of him_ , and Phil’s entire body jerked at the feel of it, hot and wet and almost frighteningly intimate. His legs spasmed, knocking Clint back a little, though Phil was able to keep from actually kicking him.

“Sorry!” Phil panted. “Sorry, I just—it just—”

“Felt good?” Clint rubbed his leg soothingly.

“Yeah,” Phil said. 

“Here,” Clint said. “I’ve got an idea.” He lifted one of Phil’s legs up and out a bit, bent at the knee. “Hold this.”

Phil reached up and grabbed his leg, just behind the knee, then saw where Clint was going with it and did the other one too, so that he was holding his own legs apart, spreading his own ass for Clint to access. He could feel a stretch in his back and hips and thighs, unusual but not unpleasant; he felt his face flush as Clint looked down at him with hot, satisfied eyes.

“Oh yeah,” Clint said, licking his lips. “Yeah, baby, just like that. Open yourself up for me.” He bent back down, and the sight of his tawny head descending between Phil’s legs was the hottest thing ever, right up until he felt Clint’s tongue spearing back inside him, this time accompanied by a wet fingertip. 

Phil panted and whined through his teeth as Clint worked him over, pulling him open bit by bit with his fingers so he could fit his tongue further inside, nudging at Phil’s balls with his nose, lapping and sucking at tender places that had never felt anything like it before. Phil could feel himself getting sloppy-wet, Clint’s saliva trickling down his crack as Phil’s body eased open under his attentions. Clint’s breath tickled over the wet skin inside him and he shuddered, biting back curses, tightening his grip on his own legs and pulling himself open further.

Clint pulled back a little, leaving one finger still inside, stroking Phil’s walls softly. “Lube still in the drawer, baby?”

“Y-yeah,” Phil panted. His chest was a little compressed with the position he was in, but that wasn’t why he was out of breath.

Clint rose to his knees and leaned over, fumbling the drawer open with the tips of his fingers and managing to grab the bottle on his second try. He inspected the label, nodding in approval; it was high-quality stuff, edible and hypoallergenic, because Phil refused to penny-pinch on anything that might go up his ass or on his dick.

“Good stuff,” Clint said. “You good for more?”

Phil gave him the best facsimile of a frown he could come up with in his current posture. “I’m not lying like this for my health, Barton.”

Clint barked a laugh, turning his head to kiss one of Phil’s shins. “You might be,” he said. “It could be, like, yoga. Sex God pose or something.” He flipped open the lube and squirted a generous blob onto his fingers. His cock was standing high and dark, gleaming with moisture at the tip, but he didn’t seem to notice as he settled down between Phil’s legs and slid two fingers smoothly inside him.

“If anyone’s the—fuck!—sex god here, it’s you,” Phil panted, as Clint scissored his fingers apart and somehow wiggled his tongue in between them, running it in arcane patterns along Phil’s delicate inner skin.

Clint chuckled, breath shivery-good feeling, but didn’t pull back to reply; instead, he gave Phil’s prostate a nudge, pushing another groan out of his throat. Clint seemed to have some kind of plan in mind, fucking Phil shallowly with fingers and tongue until his body eased open, then adding another finger and starting all over again. Phil twitched and arched into the sensations, holding back the obscene commands and pleading sounds that wanted to spill from his lips; he tended to get kind of… demanding… in extremis, and it had put people off, before. He didn’t want to do anything that would put Clint off. Finally, though, he couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Fuck!” he said, his voice rough and breaking on the single syllable. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, that’s good, it’s so good, Clint, please—” he cut himself off, breathing hard, his chest heaving.

Clint raised up to look at him, stuffing Phil’s hole with several fingers as though to hold his place. Phil clenched around them, helplessly, groaning low in his throat.

“Please what, baby?” Clint said. His chin was shining wet, his lips red, his hair all over everywhere; he looked incredible, and Phil dug his fingers harder into the backs of his own knees to keep from letting go and just tackling him. “Tell me and I’ll do it.”

“Fuck me,” Phil blurted. “It feels so good, I can’t, Clint, I can’t wait much longer and I want—I want you inside me when I—but only if you want.” He trailed off, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “If you don’t want to it’s fine,” he added, getting a little control back as he adjusted to the feel of Clint’s knobby fingers, just resting inside him, a constant sweet pressure.

“If I don’t _want_ to, he says,” Clint said, grinning. “Baby, there is nothing I’d like more than to feel you coming around my cock.”

Phil shivered, swallowing hard around his dry throat. “Then do it soon,” he said, “or it’ll be too late.”

Clint’s eyes fluttered closed, and he sucked in a harsh breath. "Holy shit, you’re hot,’’ he said, his fingers twitching a little inside Phil, as though he couldn't help it. "Okay. Let’s do this.’’

He pulled his fingers out—Phil let out an involuntary grunt of protest— and squeezed another generous handful of lube out of the bottle. He slicked his cock with a few sloppy strokes, biting his lip as though the stimulation was almost too much to take, then shuffled closer to Phil on his knees. "Here,’’ he said. "Your legs’ll get sore, let me—’’ he took hold of one of Phil’s upraised thighs and pulled it over his shoulder, then coaxed the other one around his waist. Phil let his arms fall to the mattress with a thump, flexing his cramped hands.

"Yeah, that's the ticket,’’ Clint said, rough-voiced, his eyes tracing covetously over Phil’s sweat-damp chest. "Damn but you’re gorgeous. I shoulda sucked on those pretty nipples of yours longer, made ‘em all red. D’you think you'd like that, babe? Going back to SHIELD with 'em brushing against your shirt all sensitive and sore for me under that sharp James Bond suit?’’

"Fuck," Phil said, his cock jerking helplessly against his belly. “Yeah, I— yeah, please.” He shivered, goosebumps prickling up and down his skin. To go to work well-used and tender from Clint’s mouth, to feel the evidence of Clint's want whenever he moved, to have to keep his reactions under control so it wouldn't be obvious, to be reminded over and over that Clint enjoyed his body— “Please,” he said again, and his voice sounded like he’d been screaming.

"Yeah?” Clint grinned, licking his swollen lips again. "That much? Oh, yeah, darlin’, we are gonna have _fun_ with that sometime soon.”

Phil arched his back, nudging his aching hole against the wet head of Clint’s cock where he was holding it ready. “How about we get started now?’’ he said, trying not to sound as needy as he felt.

Clint hummed, pressing up against Phil’s rim for a few seconds before taking pity and pushing forward. Phil was so open that there wasn't even a stretch; his body simply let Clint in, a silken hot glide that sent ripples of pleasure up and down his spine.

"Fuck," Clint said. "Oh, _fuck_ , baby, you feel incredible, all hot and soft and sleek inside, all sweet for me.” His hands skated over Phil’s skin, down his thighs to clutch at his hips. "Can—can I move, are you ready?”

Phil growled, fumbling above his head until he found the slats of his headboard. He wrapped his hands around them, braced himself, and pushed, shoving his body down hard onto Clint’s cock. “I have been _ready_ ,” he said, gritting his teeth against the urge to just flip them back over and ride Clint like a bull, "for the last _ten minutes_. Stop playing around and _fuck me raw_.”

Clint's eyes widened, his mouth falling open, and Phil worried he'd gone too far for a bare second before Clint reared back and slammed into him, magnificent body flexing all over as he plowed into Phil like a roller coaster cresting the first hill.

"You,” he panted, his voice jerking out of him in staccato beats as his hips slapped against Phil’s ass. "You’re _perfect_ , how are you so fucking perfect—your _ass_ , fuck—So sweet, Phil, such a badass but you’re sweet for me, I never—nobody ever—”

Phil stayed braced against the headboard, clenching down and pushing onto Clint’s amazing fat cock, feeling Clint’s muscles straining with effort as he gave Phil what he wanted. Phil's chest caught with tangled up emotions at Clint’s words, at the look on his face, like he couldn't quite believe what was happening. Like gracing Phil’s bed, his body, his _life_ was something _Clint_ was lucky to do, instead of being a blessing Phil had never been optimistic enough to even fantasize about having.

“Are you close,’’ Clint said, his voice rasping. Sweat glittered at his hairline, slicked between their bodies, but he he never stopped the glorious metronome thrust of his hips. "God, are you—I need you to come, please, let me make you come, I want to feel you, Phil _please…_ ’’

“Yeah, yes, fuck.’’ Phil’s cock was heavy with it, his body ached with it, orgasm coiling like a serpent between his hips. “Touch me, if you just t-touch me I—”

Clint didn't wait for him to finish, just grabbed Phil’s cock. It was amazing, it was just right: hot and slippery with lube, strong calloused fingers squeezing tight, making a channel for Phil to fuck into. Phil’s brain fizzed out into sparks as Clint’s cock inside him and his fist around him seemed to meet in the middle, holding him on the precipice of something vast. He was almost there, he was almost—he—

“ _Phil_ ,” Clint said, his voice almost sobbing, “I can't wait, I—please—” and Phil let go of the headboard and pinched his own nipples hard, and that was it, that shoved him over the edge, and his cock jerked in Clint’s hand as he came and came.

“Oh thank god,” Clint said, and he pushed in hard, twice more, the force of it pushing Phil up the mattress; on the second thrust he froze, buried deep, and his breath whistled through his teeth as he pumped into Phil’s ass.

They stayed like that for a long moment, both twitching through the aftershocks, and then Clint let out a long, shaky breath and eased Phil’s leg down from his shoulder.

“Holy shit,” Clint said, rubbing the tense muscle of Phil’s thigh. “Wow. I mean, _wow._ ”

“Yeah,” Phil agreed, blinking up at Clint. “Forget the whole angel thing, you are definitely some kind of sex demon.”

Clint laughed and ducked his head, rubbing the back of his neck and then startling and shooting a betrayed look at his hand; it was the hand he’d jerked Phil off with, and he’d just smeared lube and Phil’s come into his own hair. Phil squeezed down around the softening cock that was still mostly inside him and tried not to smirk in proprietary smugness. “Hey,” he said.

“Yeah?” 

“It’s good to be home. I missed you.” 

Clint smiled at him, pink and almost bashful despite being covered with semen and sweat, his mouth still puffy from eating Phil’s ass. The juxtaposition would have been enough to make Phil hard again, if such a thing were remotely physically possible. “I missed you, too,” he said. “You don’t even know. I hope the world’s evildoers chill out for a couple weeks; I got a long list of stuff I want to do with you.”

“Mmm, I can’t wait,” Phil said, his body still buzzing with pleasure. “Maybe we could start with a shower? And then brunch, before I have to go in for debrief?”

“I like your plans,” Clint told him. He patted Phil’s hip, and Phil unwound his leg from around Clint’s hips, letting him pull away. They both sighed as Clint slipped free of Phil’s ass, and Phil bit his lip as wetness trickled out of him. He was going to need to wash these sheets in the heavy-duty cycle.

“God, you’re still so open,” Clint said, looking down at Phil’s ass in fascination. He swiped a rough thumb over Phil’s hole, smearing the lube and come around Phil’s rim. “Swear to god, one of these days I’m gonna do that and then lick it right back out of you.”

Phil’s spent cock gave a little twitch at the image. “Next time,” he said. “I have to be at SHIELD by two, and I’m hungry.”

“Well, I can’t let you go in there hungry,” Clint said, pulling himself away and getting gracefully to his feet, stretching in a tantalizing line before giving Phil his cleaner hand and pulling him up beside him. “That would be a failure in performing my, er, partnerly duties.”

Phil kissed his cheek and tugged him down the hall to the bathroom, ignoring the slippery trail he could feel making its way down his thigh. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get clean and throw the sheets in the washer and go get omelettes.”

 _Partnerly_ , Clint had said. That was a good sign, right? It seemed like that was a good sign.

Phil’s shampoo and body wash smelled amazing on Clint, as it turned out. And the omelettes at the diner on the corner of Phil’s street were excellent. Phil made it to his debrief fifteen minutes early, soon enough so that he could take his place without anyone there to notice how gingerly he sat. He flattered himself that he looked just like normal.

Director Hill came in, took one look at him, and raised her eyebrows nearly to her hairline. “Well,” she said. “You look… well-rested.” 

Phil shifted just enough for his pants to pull across the marks on his thighs. “Yes,” he said lightly, flipping through his notes. “It’s a miracle what a night in your own bed can do.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, eternal thanks are due to Kathar for beta and the Order of St. Wilfrid for encouragement and squee. Chapter 4 is called "The Great Brooklyn Bake-Off" and I'm hoping to have it up within the next week or so.


	4. The Great Brooklyn Bake-Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The weekend was spent in what could charitably be called an orgy of baking.

Two days later, Phil was still going about his life with an unfortunate tendency to drift off into pleasant thoughts of Clint whenever nothing interesting was happening; given that he’d just finished an op and everyone was in debriefing-and-reports mode, that was a lot of the time. Jasper had finally given up on him, rolling his eyes and going off to work on his AAR revisions somewhere where he wouldn’t be “distracted by the fucking look on your face, Phil, Jesus, put it away.”

It wasn’t like Jasper hadn’t been exactly the same way every time he’d started seeing someone. Phil had been required to hear all about the new-relationship virtues (and post-relationship vices) of Annika, Shilvi, Mariella, and two separate Jennifers since they’d started working together, so he figured Jasper owed him one.

His phone buzzed, and Phil swiped it open immediately when he saw it was an email from Clint.

> To: pjcoulson@securemail.net
> 
> From: theoriginalhawkeye@avengers.org
> 
> Subject: Fw: Re: Re: Team Dinner RSVP Roll-Call!!
> 
> Hey phil, you said before to let you know when the next one was after you got home, so here’s the deets.
> 
> YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO. I know you just got home and probably have like a million things to wrap up from the mission. I promise I won’t be mad if you can’t make this time. But if you’re like sick of everyone at SHIELD and want to hang out with some different weirdos, just let me know.
> 
> <3,
> 
> CFB
> 
> —————————FORWARDED MESSAGE————————-
> 
> From: doitwaspstyle@avengers.org
> 
> To: theoriginalhawkeye@avengers.org
> 
> Subject: Re: Re: Team Dinner RSVP Roll-Call!!
> 
> CLINT come ON, you’ve been talking about this guy nonstop for MONTHS, I am DYING HERE. He doesn’t even have to bring anything, just allow himself to be interrogated by your friends!! :-D just kidding!! I bet he’s great, I really just want to meet him and so do the others! I tried to get some gossip out of Natasha and she just smiled like she does and wouldn’t share and it is KILLING ME.
> 
> BE A FRIEND, come on, it’s part of the shrinky-growy-superhero code of brother and sisterhood!!!
> 
> <3 <3 <3
> 
> Jan
> 
> ———
> 
> From: theoriginalhawkeye@avengers.org
> 
> To: doitwaspstyle@avengers.org
> 
> Subject: Re: Team Dinner RSVP Roll-Call!!
> 
> Hey Jan, idk if we’re gonna make it this time, Phil just got back from a killer op and he’s got the jet lag from hell. He totally wants to come, though, just SHIELD won’t let up, you know how it is. I’ll let you know if we can swing it.
> 
> clint
> 
> ———
> 
> From: doitwaspstyle@avengers.org
> 
> To: avengers-all@avengers.org
> 
> Subject: Team Dinner RSVP Roll-Call!!
> 
> It’s that time again!! First Thursday of the month, otherwise known as AVENGERS TEAM DINNER!
> 
> Tony’s been working on a robot waiter, so we’ll be meeting at the Tower this month in the big dining room on the Avengers common floor. Remember, dinner starts at 7pm, so don’t be late if you want to make sure to eat! 
> 
> Thor’s on Asgard right now and I think Bucky’s still on the moon, so I know they’re out, but everyone else please let me know if you’re able to make it so we can make sure we’ve got enough food. As usual, appetizers and desserts are potluck and Tony’s generously providing the main course and drinks. Remember to bring a list of all your ingredients!
> 
> Let me know if you have any questions! Can’t wait to see everyone next Thursday!
> 
> :-)
> 
> Jan

Before Phil could do more than notice his stomach swooping with anxiety, his mail pinged again.

> To: pjcoulson@securemail.net
> 
> From: theoriginalhawkeye@avengers.org
> 
> Subject: WRONG EMAIL SORRY
> 
> Shit I didn’t mean to send that thing from jan, just the invite. I’m sorry. Seriously, please don’t worry about the others, they understand about missions and shit, Jan just gets excited. You seriously don’t have to come if you don’t want to.
> 
> C

Phil sighed. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go—of course he wanted to go, if only because it obviously meant a lot to Clint—but he’d thought he would have more time to prepare. What did you even bring to a potluck with the Avengers? Was it better to aim high and possibly fail, or play it safe and potentially look like you weren’t trying? Phil had negotiated a lot of sensitive political situations in his time, but this was a new one.

He remembered the way Clint had looked at him when he walked off the plane, like Phil’s greasy, half-dead self was the best thing he’d seen in weeks. He remembered the way Clint had taken care of him, and the way Clint seemed so reluctant to ask for anything for himself.

Dammit. Phil was _going_ to this dinner, and he would bring something _great_.

_Don’t worry about it,_ he replied to Clint. _Go ahead and RSVP for both of us, I’ll make something to bring. Does anyone have any food restrictions or allergies?_

The reply came quickly, a string of smiley face, purple heart, and party horn emoji followed by _will do! IDK about the food, I usually just bring chips and salsa. Um, Cap eats a ton and so do a lot of the others, Tony doesn’t eat bread and Bruce doesn’t eat meat?_

Phil frowned to himself, running through his mental file of recipes for possibilities. He’d made something of a name for himself at SHIELD with his scones, but they needed to be consumed the same day they were made, and he doubted he’d have time to bake enough in one day to feed Avengers, even leaving out any special dietary needs. He’d done mini-cheesecakes before, and those tended to impress. Plus, they were fairly easy to adapt in a number of ways, and could be made ahead and frozen. _Does Tony eat sugar or other carbs? And do you know if Bruce eats dairy?_

_Yes to both,_ Clint replied, _Tony eats rice and quinoa and some kind of fancy cake from a special bakery and Bruce eats veggie pizza and takes milk in his tea._

_Great,_ Phil sent back. _Can you ask Ms. Van Dyne if cheesecake would be acceptable for Thursday?_

_OMG, Phil, call her Jan, she’s 98% likely to hug you the minute you meet her. And I’m sure cheesecake is awesome but if it makes you feel better I’ll ask._

Clint signed the email with his initials and a kiss emoji, and Phil waffled for about ten seconds before throwing caution to the wind and sending one back. He glanced over his schedule for the day, decided he could spare half an hour for research, and started Googling gluten-free cheesecake crusts.

The weekend was spent in what could charitably be called an orgy of baking. Phil had spent the week before pestering Clint for updates on who was expected to attend the dinner; mainly, he wanted to make sure he brought enough, but he was more than a little relieved to learn that both Bobbi Morse and Jessica Drew had RSVPed “no.” That would have been a level of awkwardness Phil didn’t need, though he and Agent Morse were actually fairly friendly after having worked together on a string of frustrating long-term ops related to AIM. She was away on an undercover, though, and it was probably for the best; Phil still hadn’t quite figured out the best way to bring up the fact that he was now dating her ex-husband without making it weird. 

_(“Nat’s coming,” Clint had told him. “But you don’t have to worry about her, she likes you.”_

_“Have we met?” Phil had asked, racking his brain for a mission where he’d encountered the Black Widow._

_“Um,” Clint had said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Not… officially?”_

_“Ah.” Phil thought back over November and December, remembering anomalies. There had been an unusually clumsy new server at Clint’s hipster diner who had spilled a drink on him and never been seen again; a ponytailed tourist who had walked in front of him infuriatingly slowly for seven blocks, playing on her phone and yet somehow managing to block the whole sidewalk despite being half Phil’s size; a dog walker who had let her charges run up and jump on him with muddy paws; a junior agent he didn’t recognize who’d cut in line in front of him and nabbed the last donut. “Wow,” he’d said. “I’m sending her the dry cleaning bill for my blue suit.”_

_“She’ll pay it,” Clint had assured him. “Sorry, she just—she worries.”_

_“It’s fine,” Phil had told him. “I’m glad she’s looking out for you. And—you said she—”_

_“You’re good,” Clint had assured him, and Phil had relaxed, one major hurdle overcome.)_

So it was just as well that Phil didn’t have to worry about exes, because he was busy trying not to worry about the fact that Captain America had RSVPed “yes” for the dinner. And Clint had told Captain America that Phil was bringing cheesecake. _And Captain America had said he couldn’t wait to try it._ Phil was trying not to think too hard about that, to prevent himself from having a complete nervous breakdown.

After conferring with Clint, Phil had decided to allow a half cheesecake for each enhanced Avenger and a quarter for each one who was, like Clint, a standard-issue human at the pinnacle of their abilities. And one with a gluten-free crust made of flaxseed and almond meal for Tony Stark. And a special tiny three-inch low-sugar cheesecake for Danielle Cage. And four kinds of toppings (chocolate ganache, amaretto cherry, blueberry lemon, and salted caramel.) And a whole cheesecake for Captain America.

Phil was possibly overcompensating just a little.

By the late afternoon on Sunday, he had everything ready; the cheesecakes were spread out over several of Clint’s neighbors freezers, the fruit was macerating, and the caramel sauce was chilled, ready to be warmed up and drizzled. Each neighbor had careful instructions regarding how to thaw the cakes in the refrigerator the day before the dinner (Phil had made a handout). Phil had taken Thursday afternoon off work, and had a timed schedule already prepared for picking the cheesecakes up, putting them in the commercial plastic cake holders he’d gotten from a restaurant supply store, and loading them into the car that he’d booked to transport himself, Clint, and the mountain of desserts to Avengers Tower. 

After a few more attempts to convince Phil that nobody would mind if they just brought chips, Clint had thrown himself into helping; he’d been the one to sweet-talk the neighbors into lending freezer space, and had actually found a tenant with a gluten-free kitchen who was willing to let Phil cook and store Tony’s cheesecake there to avoid cross-contamination. He’d made trips to the Whole Foods for overpriced, out of season fruit and to the grocery store for more cream cheese and to the doggy daycare to keep Lucky out from underfoot while Phil baked (because Clint’s place had a brand new stove and more counter space than Phil’s, as well as the helpful freezer-sharing neighbors). When there were no more errands to run, he’d perched on a stool and just kept Phil company, watching him over the kitchen island with a soft smile on his face, making puppy eyes until Phil gave him the beaters and bowls to lick, raw eggs be damned.

(Phil had made one extra cheesecake; they had it that night after collapsing exhausted onto Clint’s couch and eating Chinese takeout straight out of the carton. It was delicious.)

Phil slept at Clint’s Sunday night, and even though they were too tired for anything strenuous, they rubbed off on each other while trading sugary kisses, and then Clint wiped their bellies off and they fell asleep holding each other. He went in to work Monday wearing another of Clint’s Stark-given suits and no fewer than three hickeys underneath it, convinced that the week was going to be amazing.


	5. The Best-Laid Strategic Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MISSED CALL: 10 minutes ago  
> UNKNOWN NUMBER
> 
> MISSED CALL: 25 minutes ago  
> UNKNOWN NUMBER
> 
> MESSAGES: 35 minutes ago  
> UNKNOWN NUMBER  
> Agent Coulson, I assume your phone is off for work-related reasons. When you get this message please call 202-616-9383 ASAP regarding Clint Barton.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried something new with the notifications in this one - if you can't see the images, the text is inline below, but I thought it would be fun to see the phone.

Phil spent the afternoon in a strategic planning mini-retreat in one of the sub-basements of SHIELD HQ, ostensibly because it was the only room that met the Director’s requirements for both security and extensive whiteboard space, but actually (Phil suspected) because the thick concrete walls made the whole level The Land Where Cell Signal Goes To Die, so people couldn’t get out of strategically retreating by faking an emergency and/or creating elaborate Pinterest boards of common household items and tagging them with the ways they could be used as improvised weaponry.

(In Phil’s defense, he’d used it as a training resource in his next rotation at the Academy, and he shouldn’t have been at that meeting anyway, since they only needed him for a single ten-minute segment.)

Regardless, after spending the afternoon discussing his communication style and sending scathing critique of the facilitator across the room to Victoria via eyebrow semaphore, he wasn’t expecting for his phone to come alive with notifications when he stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor at 4:33. Curious, but not especially worried—sometimes Clint would go on an internet spiral and blow up Phil’s phone with Wikipedia links or dog memes or links to TV Tropes pages—he pulled up the screen, then stopped walking in the middle of the hall as he read.

 

 

 

> **MISSED CALL:** 10 minutes ago
> 
> UNKNOWN NUMBER
> 
> **MISSED CALL:** 25 minutes ago
> 
> UNKNOWN NUMBER
> 
> **MESSAGES:** 35 minutes ago
> 
> UNKNOWN NUMBER
> 
> Agent Coulson, I assume your phone is off for work-related reasons. When you get this message please call 202-616-9383 ASAP regarding Clint Barton.
> 
> **NEWS:** 37 minutes ago
> 
> Op-Ed: Stronger Regulations Needed To Slow The Mad Science Trend
> 
> **MAIL:** 38 minutes ago
> 
> _ Google Alert: “Hawkeye” _
> 
> Reuters: Avenger Hawkeye Reported Injured in Coney Island Squid Battle
> 
> **MISSED CALL:** 40 minutes ago
> 
> UNKNOWN NUMBER
> 
> **NEWS:** 54 minutes ago
> 
> BREAKING: Casualties Reported In Avenger Octo-Clash
> 
> **MAIL:** 1 hour 3 minutes ago
> 
> Google Alert: “Avengers”
> 
> _ Roller Coaster Enthusiast: Damage to Cyclone in Avengers Battle A Tragedy For Coaster Historians _
> 
> **NEWS:** 1 hour 52 minutes ago
> 
> Video: Avengers Defend Coney Island From Giant Octopus: Watch our live coverage
> 
> **MAIL:** 2 hours 22 minutes ago
> 
> Google Alert: “Avengers”
> 
> _ CNN: Avengers Assembled To Fight Brooklyn Sea Monsters _
> 
> **MESSAGES:** 2 hours 37 minutes ago
> 
> Clint
> 
> FML it’s AIM, I hate those assholes. Probably gonna have to get a raincheck on dinner, sorry :( promise I’ll make it up to you *purple heart emoji* ok gtg
> 
> **NEWS:** 2 hours 51 minutes ago
> 
> Video: Squidlike Creatures Attack Coney Island
> 
> **MESSAGES:** 3 hours ago
> 
> Clint
> 
> Hey babe, we’re assembling- some kind of giant tentacle monster thing, it’s probably mad scientists again. Can we push dinner back to 8:30? *Kiss emoji* 
> 
> **NEWS:** 3 hours ago
> 
> Ferry Menaced by “Giant Sea Monster”
> 
> **MESSAGES:** 3 hours 48 minutes ago
> 
> Clint
> 
> [Photo of a plate containing a few crumbs and smears of cheesecake and a dirty fork] mmmmm, tastes almost as good as you ;)

Phil stared down at his phone for a few seconds, his stomach like lead, as he tried to tell himself that “reported injured” didn’t mean anything, it didn’t mean Clint was seriously hurt. But.

But Clint hadn’t called.

Clint always called, as soon as he could after he got called out, or at least sent a text to let Phil know he was all right; he knew that Phil worried, otherwise.

Phil should call the number from the message he’d been left. He should call and find out… whatever there was to find out. That Clint was okay. That he’d just, just broken his phone in the battle or something.

Phil pulled up the phone app with cold, trembling fingers, but before he could dial out, his phone vibrated with an incoming call.

UNKNOWN NUMBER, the screen said.

Phil swiped to answer so fast he nearly fumbled the phone. “Coulson,” he snapped, bringing it up to his ear.

“Agent Coulson,” a woman’s voice said, “Good, I’m glad I was able to reach you. I’m calling about Clint Ba—”

“Is he okay?” Phil demanded, his voice tight. “What happened, is he going to be all right?”

“He was on top of the Cyclone—hey!” Phil heard a scuffling noise, and then a thick, snuffly breath, and then—

“Phil?”

—And then Clint’s voice, saying his name.

“Oh,” Phil said softly, and his limbs went rubbery with relief; he took a few unsteady steps and leaned against the wall, letting his eyes slide closed so he could focus on his hearing better.

“Are you freakin’ out?” Clint’s voice was over-loud and a little slurred, but reassuringly strong. “You _are_ , you’re freakin’ out. Nat, I _said_ , I said you gotta call ‘im or he’ll freak out, okay? You gotta call ‘im, you promised.”

“I did call him, Clint.” Phil could hear the woman—the Black Widow, apparently—quite clearly; Clint must have put them on speakerphone. “I called him four times; his phone was off.”

“From your _spy phone_ ,” Clint said. “Doesn’ count, that jus’ makes it scarrierer. Phil. Phil. I’m sorry Nat scared you, don’ be mad. My phone got, got, um. A squid ate it. So I couldn’ call you, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not mad,” Phil said. His voice was quiet; he still didn’t feel like he could get enough air in his lungs to be anything else. “Clint, what happened? Are you all right?”

“Fell offa roller coaster,” Clint said. “No. Um. Roller coaster fell offa me. On me. Kinda. Then I got squiddeded. Ed. By a squid.”

“He was sniping from on top of the Coney Island Cyclone when the giant squid pulled it down,” the Black Widow said. “He’s got closed spiral fractures of the right tibia and fibula, soft-tissue injuries throughout the right leg, various abrasions, and a number of suction bruises.”

“…from falling off a roller coaster?”

“From the suckers!” Clint called, giggling. “It’s like those marks I left on your—”

“Anyway!” The Black Widow said, as Clint’s voice grew suddenly and suspiciously muffled. “Clint wanted to make sure you knew that his injuries weren’t critical and that his prognosis is good. He’ll be going into surgery soon to treat the breaks, so he won’t be able to call you for a good few hours.”

“Thank you,” Phil told her. “I appreciate you letting me know. Are you at Kings County or NYU?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Which hospital?” Phil said. “I’ll take a SHIELD car, I should be able to get over there in less than an hour.”

“Awww, Phil,” Clint said. “You’re so sweet. Nat, didn’ I tell you he’s so sweet, Nat?”

“Yes, Clint,” the Black Widow said indulgently. “He’s very sweet.”

Phil’s ears got hot, but he couldn’t really regret knowing that Clint had apparently talked Phil up to one of his best (and, incidentally, most deadly) friends.

“We’re at NYU,” she continued. “The Maria Stark Ward. There’s security; I’ll tell them to let you through. Bring your badge.”

“I will,” Phil said.

“Bring your ass,” Clint said. “I want something pretty to look at, everything’s all hospitally.”

There was a pause.

“He’s on a lot of pain medication,” the Black Widow said.

“I figured.” He took a long, steadying breath. “Ms. Romanov? Would you mind letting me speak with Clint privately for a moment?”

“Of course,” she said. “Give me a minute to get him situated.” There was some more scuffling and whispers, and then he heard Clint again, sounding warm and close and right in his ear. “Heeeeey, baby, we gonna have phone sex now?”

“Not right now,” Phil said, feeling protective and amused and hopelessly fond. “We’ll do that once you’re feeling better.”

“Stupid squid.” Phil could hear Clint’s pout in his tone. “Ruining all the fun. And we had plans tonight and all.”

“We can still have dinner, sweetheart,” Phil said, too relieved to guard his tongue. “I’ll come eat with you in the hospital.”

“Promise?” Clint’s voice had gone soft, tiny and hopeful; it made Phil’s heart turn over.

“I promise,” Phil said, starting to walk toward the motor pool. He propped the phone between his shoulder and his ear and pulled out his SHIELD Blackberry to requisition a car. Under “justification for use” he put _inter-agency liaison_. “I’m leaving right now, I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”

“Kay. Then you c’n sign my cast,” Clint said, perking up a little. “You can sign first, okay? I’ll save it for you.”

“I’d be honored,” Phil said. He sighed as he approached the elevator that would take him to the motor pool. “Clint, I’m about to get on the elevator, so the call might drop, okay? But I’m on my way to the hospital. Hopefully I’ll be there when you get out of surgery.”

“Okay,” Clint said. “I’mma lil sleepy anyway, Phil. Imma nap until you get here, okay? And then we can have dinner.”

“Good plan,” Phil said, stepping into the elevator.

Clint hummed, apparently succumbing to the drugs and fatigue, and Phil listened to his soft breathing over the open line until the elevator got deep enough underground that the call dropped.

Phil wanted very badly to abuse his badge and the SHIELD tag on his car to get to the hospital faster, but managed to stay within the outer limits of traffic law—or at least within the outer limits of what the NYPD didn’t think worth pursuit over—by reminding himself that Clint was in a hospital with at least one Avenger at his side, being prepped for surgery, and in no immediate danger.

Also that Phil would have to smooth things over if he pissed off NYPD, and he really should save that professional capital for a time when Clint needed him and there _wasn’t_ any time to spare. It seemed likely there would be one, eventually.

He did use the SHIELD parking placard when he got to the hospital, though. There were limits.

The Maria Stark Ward was located in the new part of the hospital, and everything in it, including the subtle but excellent security features, was as crisp and spotless as a catalogue. Phil’s professional brain took approving note of the recessed tracks for security gates, the tiny shielded cameras, and the coverage of the security stations. The high quality of their equipment and training was obvious; it was the middle of the swing shift on a Monday, nothing much was happening, and all the personnel Phil saw were still focused and alert. Admittedly, his _personal_ brain was still, as Clint would say, freaking out, but he knew he’d appreciate the security later, once he’d set his own eyes on Clint and could take a complete breath again.

He’d been required to show his badge to enter the wing, and security had called up to confirm—good—so he wasn’t terribly surprised to be met at the final security station by someone who could only be the Black Widow. She was still wearing her field suit, and her long red hair was pulled back into a rough, sloppy knot held in place with a pencil. It was streaked with dust, but damp and clean around the hairline, where Phil could see evidence of a butterfly-bandaged cut on her temple that had probably bled like hell when it was fresh. She looked shockingly tiny as she leaned over the counter talking to the guard.

She turned just as Phil was about to reach into his pocket for his badge again.

“Agent Coulson,” she said. “Thank you for coming.” Against the red of her hair and the bruise blooming around the edges of the bandage, her face looked pale, her eyes huge. She looked young and vulnerable and tremulous, and a part of Phil stirred protectively even as another, larger part was wondering if maybe he could get her to do an advanced tradecraft seminar for his junior agents.

“Ms. Romanov,” he said, nodding respectfully. It really wasn’t the right time to shake hands, he thought. “Thank you for contacting me. How are things going?” His stomach was a mess of nerves, waiting to hear about Clint, but he wasn’t going to talk about his condition out in the open like that. Phil might be emotionally compromised, but he still understood OpSec.

“All according to projections,” she said, starting to walk down the corridor and indicating with a tilt of the head that Phil should follow. He fell into step easily, comforted a little at the report and more at her air of calm, though he supposed she would be able to put that on at will. She led him to a security door and unlocked it with a swipe of her wrist, waving him through.

A short hallway with two more sets of tracks for security shutters led to a small, lavish waiting area, with plush seating and what looked like a fully-stocked kitchenette at one end. Tall windows lined one wall, looking out into a beautifully landscaped courtyard, but Romanov didn’t pause, moving to the other door in the far end of the room and leading Phil into a more normal-looking (though still obviously new and high-end) corridor, lined with doors that likely led to private rooms.

Romanov opened the second door on the left. “Clint’s surgery went well,” she said. “They were just closing up when I came to get you, so once he’s woken up a little in recovery they’ll bring him back here.” She waved at the bed, which was wider than normal hospital issue and had a purple balloon tied to the railing. The printing on it said “Get Well Soon,” but someone had scribbled “…or else!” on the bottom with a marker.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Phil said, looking around the room to get his bearings. There was a whiteboard on the wall for the usual notes, a private bathroom off to one side, and a small seating area in a window alcove that had a loveseat, a coffee table, and a padded recliner that looked like it could probably serve as sleeping accommodations in a pinch. Rolling tables by the bed and recliner looked as though they could serve to eat from or use as a desk, and a cabinet in the corner had extra pillows and blankets. “Thank you.” He bit the inside of his cheek as he looked at her, trying to decide whether he should ask more questions; he was anxious to hear more about Clint’s prognosis, his treatment, how long he would take to heal, but he was also very aware of being there on sufferance, in what was clearly Avengers territory despite being ostensibly just another part of the hospital. He wasn’t entirely sure of the best tactics here, the best way to ingratiate himself, and besides, he doubted that anything he could do would impress someone like the Black Widow.

Enough. He took three deep breaths, focusing on calming down. This wasn’t a mission; he wasn’t infiltrating anything. He was there as himself, to take care of Clint as himself, and hopefully to begin to build a relationship with Clint’s best friend as himself.

He turned to Romanov, deliberately letting go of his control over his body language and expressions, giving in to the urge to rock up on his toes and back down, to fidget a little with his hands. “I don’t want to violate Clint’s privacy,” he said. “But I would be thankful of any information you feel comfortable sharing. His definition of ‘fine’ is a lot broader than mine.” He put his hands in his pockets to fiddle with his keychain. “I try not to hover—he knows how to handle himself—but it’s hard not to worry, sometimes. Especially since I often have enough information to extrapolate what must have happened on his missions.”

She looked at him, the veil of vulnerability falling away. “Funny,” she said. Her mouth quirked in a flash of smile for a moment, though her eyes were sharp. “He said pretty much the same thing about you a few days ago. Seems to think he’s your personal guardian angel.”

Phil froze, his ears going hot. “I—he told you about that? Do, ah, do the others…”

“Relax,” she said, “he thought the whole thing was very impressive. And he swore me to secrecy, regardless.” She grinned, a dimpled and unstudied thing, making her look at once older—or at least less aggressively doe-eyed—and more sincere. “Much to my disappointment, he didn’t think it would be fair to ask permission to take your picture while you weren’t in your right mind.” She took a step closer and patted his shoulder, and the atmosphere in the room eased. “Why don’t you take a seat, Agent Coulson, and I’ll fill you in while we wait?”

“Thank you,” Phil said, feeling like he’d passed some kind of test he hadn’t realized he was taking. He unbuttoned his jacket and sat on one end of the loveseat, leaving it to her to choose between the other half and the chair. He let himself lean forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “And it’s Phil, please. I’m not here in my professional capacity.”

She perched on the edge of the recliner seat, looking at him steadily for a long moment, then nodded. “Phil. The surgeons are stabilizing the break, and then he’s got to spend 48 hours with his leg elevated before he can go home. He’ll need to completely avoid putting weight on the leg until he’s cleared to start his rehab in a week or two, and it’ll likely be a few months before he’s back in the field.”

Phil frowned. “We’ll need to do something about his loft,” he said. “I don’t want him having to deal with those stairs every day.”

She blinked at him, and then relaxed, leaning back in the chair. “I agree,” she said. “Ordinarily, I’d convince him to stay at the Tower for a while.”

“That… probably would offer the best facilities,” Phil said reluctantly. “But if he’d prefer otherwise, I’m sure we can find a solution.” He had a sudden image of himself taking Clint home with him, moving the furniture around to give him room to maneuver in a wheelchair or on crutches. It was an oddly domestic thought, and Phil found himself almost wistful over it, though he was aware that people in different lines of work probably wouldn’t think that seeing one’s lover through a difficult convalescence sounded particularly cozy.

“Hm,” she said. “Well, we’ll see how Clint feels once he shakes off the sedatives.”

The door opened, and they both stood as orderlies wheeled in a gurney. Phil took a few steps toward them then stopped near the foot of the bed, not wanting to be in the way but desperately wanting to get closer, to see Clint for himself, to hold his hand and make sure that he knew Phil was there. He hovered impatiently while they transferred Clint into the bed and got his heavily bandaged leg elevated. When they moved to arranging the IV pole, Phil stepped up to Clint’s un-tubed side, coming as close as he could to the bed without jostling anything. Clint looked like hell, with scrapes and round, plum-colored bruises peeking out from under bandages and the edges of his hospital gown, but his eyes were mostly open, if glassy, and he seemed to be trying to help the orderlies get him settled.

“Clint,” Phil said, his voice coming out thicker than he’d meant it to, and laid his hand lightly on Clint’s, not exerting any pressure in case of injury but wanting Clint to feel him.

Clint turned his head on the pillow, blinking rapidly as though trying to force himself awake. “Phil? Y’here?” His voice was slurred and overloud and hoarse from the ventilator tube; it was beautiful. He looked at Phil’s hand covering his, then his eyes traced up Phil’s arm to his face, and he broke into a wide smile, no less joyful for being kind of blurry at the edges. “Heeeeeey, baby,” he said.

“Hey,” Phil said, giving in to the temptation to touch Clint’s face, just tracing lightly over his cheek; there was a spot near the corner of his mouth with no visible bruising. Clint turned a little, kissing clumsily in the direction of Phil’s fingers.

“I said I’d be here,” Phil continued. “I wouldn’t miss date night.”

“Yeah,” Clint said, simple and content and drowsy. “Why didn’ you kiss me yet, though? Date night’s for kissin.”

“You have a cut on your mouth,” Phil said. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “Th’n come down here’n I’ll kiss you,” he said. “’S my mouth, I c’n decide what hurts it.”

“He’s got you there,” Romanov said. Phil glanced over; she was standing on the other side of the bed, discussing something with one of the orderlies. The part of Phil’s brain that never quite forgot situational awareness noted that the orderly had a streaky jet black home dye job; Phil was uncomfortably reminded of a certain teenage phase of his own that had looked much cooler in his imagination than in reality.

“See,” Clint said, pulling his attention back. A man who had been attacked by a sea monster and subsequently heavily sedated should not be able to look so adorable trying to pout. “‘M right. Nat said so.”

“Well,” Phil said, “If Nat said.” He bent down, ignoring the way the bed rail dug into his stomach, and brought his lips a breath away from Clint’s. Clint chuckled, low and satisfied, and tilted his head up, pressing his mouth to Phil’s in a move that owed more to enthusiasm than grace. Phil sighed, feeling another layer of worry peel away.

He stayed bent over until Clint pulled away, then he brushed featherlight kisses over the tip of Clint’s nose, the slope of his cheekbone, the corner of his mouth, his temple; everywhere he could find a patch of unmarked skin. “It’s really good to see you,” he murmured. “I was worried.”

Clint smiled up at him sleepily, ignoring the swollen cut on his lip that must be pulling uncomfortably. “C’n you stay awhile?” he asked.

“I don’t plan on leaving until you do,” Phil told him.

“Make ‘em feed you,” Clint said. “‘M gonna…” he closed his eyes.

“Just rest,” Phil said, unable to resist another kiss. “I’ll be here.”

“Awesome,” Clint mumbled. Phil just stood there for a minute, looking down at him and holding his hand, until a scraping sound caught his attention. He looked over; the goth orderly was rearranging the furniture, moving the bedside table.

“If you wouldn’t mind stepping aside for a minute, I can put the chair up next to the bed for you,” he said, picking up the recliner with ease; either it was lighter than it looked or picking up sick people really built up your strength.

“That would be wonderful, thank you,” Phil told him. He let go of Clint’s hand reluctantly, then turned to Romanov. “Is there a cafeteria nearby? Clint looks like he’ll be out for a while, but I thought I’d pick up a sandwich or something so we can eat together later.”

“Not much of a date night,” she said, her tone light but her expression watchful.

Phil shrugged. “In our line of work, if we missed a date every time something like this happened, we’d have a lot fewer dates,” he said. “We’ll be fine.” A thought occurred. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t think—do you want to join us? I didn’t mean I wanted to kick you out.”

“Hm.” She smiled at him, a pleased little thing, all dimples and twinkling eyes; Phil couldn’t help smiling back. “How about this: I’ll go get cleaned up and then bring back something for all of us to share, and then leave you for the evening.”

“That sounds great,” Phil said. He reached for his wallet, but she waved him off.

“Don’t bother, it’s my treat,” she said. “Any preferences? Food restrictions I should know about?”

“I’ll eat just about anything,” Phil told her. “Whatever you’d like would be fine. Thank you, Ms. Romanov.”

She tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other a fair bit,” she said. “You’d better call me Natasha.”

Phil settled in the relocated recliner and reached over to lay his hand softly on Clint’s shoulder. He couldn’t feel any bandages, so figured it was a safe place to touch to give them both some contact. “Thank you, Natasha,” he said.

She picked up the remote control from the other side of Clint’s bed and handed it to him. “ _Dog Cops_ marathon on channel 29,” she said. “The doctor should come by to check in by nine, Clint had you on his HIPAA paperwork so they all know they can talk to you.”

“Oh,” Phil said, startled. He hadn’t added Clint to his own paperwork yet—it had seemed presumptuous, somehow, to assume he’d want to be on it so soon. That he would want to be there, to know things, if Phil wasn’t able to speak. Apparently, Phil had been underestimating him. “I—I didn’t realize he’d done that. That’s a relief. Thank you.”

“He likes you a lot,” she said.

“I like _him_ a lot.” Phil looked over at the bed; Clint was out cold, the swelling on his face making him snore a bit. He’d drooled a little, and the sucker marks on his exposed face and arms made him look like he’d caught some sort of bizarre rash. Phil rubbed his shoulder, thinking how lucky he was. “He’s really special.”

“He really is,” Rom—Natasha agreed. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Take your time,” Phil told her, flipping to channel 29. Oh, cool, it was the first episode in Captain Bongo’s police corruption arc. “I’m good.”

She nodded, and left him to it.

Clint napped for two and a half more episodes, and roused when someone slammed a door in the hall. He glanced around the room, orienting himself, then relaxed when he saw Phil. “Hey, babe,” he said. He was still a little fuzzy and loose, but had obviously slept off most of the sedation.

“Hey,” Phil said, smiling helplessly at the way his hair was sticking up crazily in between the bandages. “How’re you feeling?”

“Better than I was,” Clint said, hitting the button to raise the head of his bed a little more. “I mean, not that that’s saying much.” He stretched his arms out cautiously and winced. “Ow. Yeah, I’m pretty sore.”

“A giant squid tried to twist your leg off,” Phil reminded him. Natasha had kindly texted him a copy of the initial AAR. “It’s no wonder you’re hurting.” He glanced up at the whiteboard. “Looks like you’re scheduled for more meds soon.”

“Ugh,” Clint said. “I hate being doped up, but I can tell I probably need it.” He gestured at the blanket-covered slope of his elevated leg.

“Understandable,” Phil said. “I’m not much of a fan myself. But I hate to see you in pain; would it help if I stay here with you? I won’t if you’d rather I not, of course, but I’d like to stay. Make sure you’re all right.” He reached over the bed rail, smiling when Clint grabbed his hand and squeezed it.

“I’m the last one who’d tell you to go,” Clint said. “You’re very—reassuring, I guess. You make a guy feel like you got his back.”

“To the best of my ability,” Phil promised. “Always.”

Clint shot him a shy smile, glancing up from beneath his lashes, and Phil tightened his hold on Clint’s hand, just a little. A dramatic musical cue played on the TV, and Clint looked up at the screen.

“Ooh, is this the episode where Lt. Sparky goes undercover?”

“Yeah,” Phil said. “They’re doing a marathon, apparently.”

“Naw, this is Stark TV,” Clint said, wriggling back into the pillows a little with a satisfied look. “Channel 29, right?”

“Yeah,” Phil said, surprised. “I didn’t realize Mr. Stark had branched out into the entertainment industry.”

“Well, I mean, Tony,” Clint said. “But not like you’re thinking. He set up some kind of closed circuit thing in this ward so we’d always have what we wanted to watch. Channel 29 is _Dog Cops_ , Channel 15 is all _How It’s Made_ , Channel 37 is just, like, meditation music and videos of nature. There’s like a Netflixy-thing, too, connected to the Tower’s server. Didn’t you wonder why there weren’t any commercials?”

“I wasn’t paying much attention,” Phil admitted. “What with, you know.” He nodded at Clint’s bandaged leg.

Clint’s face softened even further. “I’m gonna be fine, babe,” he said. “I know it looks bad, but the leg’s the only really serious thing, and they’re taking care of it.” He shifted, and bit his lip, his face going pale in between the sucker marks.

“More meds soon, I think,” Phil said softly.

“Yeah,” Clint said. “I’ll probably sleep a lot. Sorry I’m not better company.”

“You’re just fine,” Phil said, reaching through the bed rail to hold Clint’s hand. “I don’t have anywhere else to be but here.”

                                                                                                    

In the end, Clint had to spend two and a half days in the hospital with his leg elevated, having mysterious treatments with cryo-boots and bone stimulating machines that Phil wasn’t entirely sure were real and not some kind of science-fiction-placebo. On Thursday morning, the doctors deemed him ready to leave, pending “suitable arrangements for home care.” Thereafter followed a lengthy argument between Clint, Natasha, and some sort of hologram-Skype-version of Tony Stark over where Clint was going to convalesce. Obviously Clint’s walk-up loft wasn’t the best place to navigate while using mobility aids, but Clint, while still on heavy painkillers and therefore less than perfectly coherent, was adamant; he was fine going to to the Tower for rehab sessions, but he didn’t want to move in for the duration. Phil would have offered his own apartment—which at least had an elevator and was all on one level—but the layout was decidedly not wheelchair-friendly, plus the building didn’t allow dogs.

“Is this some kind of AV-setup independence thing?” hologram-Stark demanded at last, after protesting that his robots did not _surveil_ the Tower, merely _provided passive security monitoring_. “Because seriously, Barton, I don’t understand why you’d rather deal with all this yourself when you could just stay two minutes away from everything you need.” His blue, translucent face creased with a frown; Phil didn’t know him well enough to be sure, but he was fairly sure it was an expression of concern rather than annoyance.

Clint shifted in bed, his face paling as he jostled his leg the wrong way. “Tony, I just—I wanna go _home_ ,” he said plaintively. “It’s nothin’ against the Tower, you know I appreciate it, but…” he sighed, and Phil felt a pang at the way his shoulders drooped.

“You’re prob’ly right,” Clint said. “I… I guess it’d be easier for everyone. I, uh. Maybe Kate c’n take Lucky for a while.”

“I could stay with you,” Phil blurted, then felt his face heat as Natasha, Clint, and Holo-Stark all turned to face him. “I mean, the loft is an issue, and the stairs, but maybe we could work something out? And I could help you get around. At least until you’re able to start your rehab.” He cleared his throat; was it presumptuous of him to invite himself to stay at Clint’s place for weeks? “Or, I mean, if you’d rather get a, a home health aide or—”

“You’d stay with me?” Clint’s voice was soft, and he was looking up at Phil with bright eyes. “I mean, you, you wouldn’t mind?” he half reached out, then let his hand drop to the bed; Phil stepped closer and picked it up, curling his fingers around it gently.

“Of course I wouldn’t,” he said. “I’d just worry, otherwise.”

Clint smiled at him. “You can have the bed,” he said. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

Phil looked up at Natasha, who rolled her eyes in sympathy.

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” Phil told Clint. “We’ll get you a hospital bed and set it up in the living room. You can rent them. And I’m sure we can get some kind of aid to get you upstairs.”

“We can take care of that,” Natasha said. “I’m sure Tony’s got something that could help.”

“Huh,” Holo-Stark said, looking thoughtful. “Yeah, sure, we’ll make it happen.”

Natasha pulled a key ring out of her pocket and held it out. “Phil, could you go to Clint’s and help get everything set up? We’ll take care of getting Clint home.”

“I, ah, I actually have a key,” Phil admitted. “I’ll take care of it.”

“ _Do_ you,” Natasha said. “Good, then. I’ll call you if anything changes. Bye, Tony.”

“Yeah, I’ll get on the delivery,” Stark said. “It’s a pain in the ass to get to Brooklyn from the hospital at this time of day; I’ll send a car.” He looked around the room. “Barton. Natasha. Barton’s boyfriend.”

“’S name’s Phil,” Clint said. The whole thing seemed to have tired him out, and he was slumped back against his pillows, blinking sleepily.

“Barton’s Phil. Catch you later.” The hologram winked out, and Natasha slid her phone—or at least, Phil thought it was some kind of phone—back into her pocket.

“You’d better go on ahead to Clint’s,” she said. “If I know Tony, he’s lining up a delivery as we speak.”

Phil brushed Clint’s hair off his forehead gently. “Is that all right?” he asked him.

“Fine,” Clint said, stifling a yawn. “M probably gonna nap until time to go, anyway. You get done what you need to, I’ll see you at home.”

Phil smiled and bent to kiss Clint, trying not to put too much weight on how good it felt to hear Clint talk about “home” as a place they’d be together. Clint’s lips were chapped, he noted; he should pick up some lip balm for him the next time he got groceries.

“I’ll get everything set up,” he promised. “See you soon.”

“Bye, babe,” Clint said, his eyes sliding shut. “Thanks.”

Phil gave into the temptation to kiss his cheek, right at the edge of one of the sucker marks. He gathered up the belongings he’d managed to scatter around, tucking them into the gym bag he’d gone home for on the second day of Clint’s hospital stay. “Call me if anything changes?”

“We will,” Natasha assured him. Clint just twitched a hand in his direction and hummed a little, already drifting. Phil paused in the doorway, reluctant; he couldn’t help feeling a little like he was abandoning Clint, despite knowing it was common sense for someone to go get Clint’s apartment wheelchair-ready.

“I’ve been looking after him for a long time,” Natasha told him, the corner of her mouth quirking. “I promise, I’ll see that he gets home safe.”

“Of course, I’m sorry,” Phil said. “I just. Well. You know.”

She smiled. “I do,” she said. “I must say, it’s nice to see someone else in his life who wants to take care of him properly.”

Phil’s mind flashed back to Sunday, and he felt his face heat as he bit back three different responses about just _how_ he and Clint took care of one another. He was punchy, that was all; he hadn’t slept terribly well in the recliner for the past few days, but even then he wouldn’t be that inappropriate.

She laughed; maybe she could tell, anyway. Maybe the Black Widow really did read minds. The Soviets had gotten up to all sorts of shenanigans, after all.

“There’ll be plenty of time for all that in a few weeks,” she said, her voice light with amusement.

“I. I’ll just. Goodbye, Natasha,” Phil said, and fled the hospital.


	6. Convalescence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint's home from the hospital at last. It's all downhill from here, right?

Phil had turned the SHIELD car back in on Tuesday, so he was both impressed and relieved to be met at the front door of the hospital by an idling town car with his name (or, well, “Barton’s Phil,” but close enough) on a placard in the window.

As he sank gratefully into the soft upholstery, Phil remembered what Clint had said about clothes just showing up in his closet sometimes. He thought of the sharp, worried way that Holo-Stark had looked at Clint, and the gray Armani suit, and the ancient TiVo with mysterious components neatly attached to the back that still somehow worked even though Phil was pretty sure it had been discontinued at least five years ago. He thought of a gleaming secure hospital wing, and a channel that played nothing but _Dog Cops_.

He felt retroactively guilty for all the times he’d believed Tony Stark’s less flattering press. The Tony Stark who was having a hospital bed delivered to a Bed-Stuy walkup at a moment’s notice was quite different from the flighty egomaniac in the papers. Phil liked what he’d seen of him so far. He hoped he’d get a chance to see more, eventually.

Once he’d been deposited in front of Clint’s building, he did a quick sweep of the entry. Happily, Clint’s tenants were good about keeping their belongings out of the common areas, so Phil made his way up to Clint’s apartment to prepare things for the delivery.

It was the work of a few minutes to gather up what little clutter was lying around: a squeaky dog toy shaped like Cap’s shield, a few re-fletched arrows drying point-down in a bucket, some stray socks, a pile of mail. Phil gave in to the temptation to put on Clint’s hoodie, which still smelled, faintly and comfortingly, like him.

Once Phil had the room picked up, he turned his attention to its layout. Clint would need space for the hospital bed and access to the bathroom; fortunately, a previous convalescence had left Clint outfitted with grip bars and non-slip decals on the tile, so the bathroom itself wouldn’t need any work.

Within half an hour, Phil had the furniture sorted and the room ready to receive the medical equipment (and then Clint.) He rolled up all the rugs for better slip resistance, propped the coffee table upright in the corner, and pushed the couch closer to the far wall. When the bed was delivered, the head of it could be placed next to the couch so that Clint could watch TV (and Phil could sit beside him). He made sure Lucky’s dishes were out of the way of the main paths through the apartment; Lucky himself was staying with Kate Bishop for the duration, though Phil hoped they’d be able to bring him home once Clint was a little less likely to be re-injured by an over-enthusiastic canine greeting.

Clint’s coat closet was only half full, so Phil went upstairs to find clothes that would go over his swollen, bandaged leg without too much effort, and put them downstairs for ease of access. Clint’s recovery wardrobe would be mostly sweats and shorts; Phil hoped he wouldn’t need to dress up for anything before his leg healed.

This was one area where female agents had it easier, Phil mused. At least one didn’t have to choose between ruining a pair of trousers and being woefully underdressed when skirts were an option.

Huh. He wondered if Clint would be willing to consider wearing kilts for the duration. Considering some of his past Avengers uniforms, it might not be a tough sell.

Phil was snapped out of the pleasant (if probably inappropriate) musings on be-kilted Clint by the always somewhat surprising ring of Clint’s landline.

(Clint was the only person Phil knew who still had a landline, at least if you didn’t count dedicated secure tactical numbers. It was oddly endearing. Honestly, nearly everything Clint did was oddly endearing. Phil had no idea how Clint’d managed to stay single so long, though he was deeply, shatteringly happy he had.)

Phil answered the phone; it was the medical equipment company, letting him know they were about half an hour away. He assured them that he would be home to accept the delivery, and spent the time until they buzzed him taking stock of Clint’s refrigerator and cabinets, making a list of groceries he’d need to lay in. Clint would need good nutrition while he was regrowing bone.

The medical supply company descended on the place like a swarm of very health-conscious locusts, bringing not only the bed (and a supply of linens, and the information for the linen service that would replenish them) but a set of featherlight and high-tech crutches, a shower chair, a smaller version of the bone-stimulating machine that Clint had been using in the hospital, a set of physical therapy equipment in a portable case, and a suspicious-looking metal crate with a Stark Industries logo that was fingerprint-locked to Clint, and which Phil tried to stow in the coat closet, behind the front door, and in the corner next to the TV before giving up and pushing it as far out of the way as possible in the lee of the kitchen island.

Phil was in the middle of an online grocery order when his phone rang, Clint’s smiling face popping onto the screen; apparently someone had replaced the phone that the squid ate. Phil nearly fumbled his own phone onto the floor in his haste to answer.

“Clint?”

“Heeeeeey, baby.” Clint’s voice was slow and blurred from medication, but warm; Phil found himself relaxing at the sound of it.

“Hey,” he said, letting his own voice go just as soft and affectionate as it wanted to go. “How are things going, sweetheart? Have they discharged you yet?”

“Yeah,” Clint said. “I have, there’s notes. ‘Structions. Gotta wheelchair ’n shit.” He sighed, lapsing into silence, and Phil could hear road noise in the background, the distant, tinny sound of music.

“Are you on your way?”

“Comin’ home,” Clint said happily. “Cause you’re there, right Phil? Nat said, she said you’d be there when I got home.”

“I will be,” Phil said. “I mean, I am. We’ve got your bed all made up and ready, all you have to do is come get in it.”

“You could get in it with me,” Clint said, making a valiant attempt to sound seductive and landing on sedated instead.

Phil chuckled. “Let’s let you get home first,” he said. “Do you know how far out you are?”

“Not very,” Clint said. “Couple minutes. I jus’ wanted to make sure you were there.”

“I’m here,” Phil said. “I’ll be here as long as you need me.”

“Long time,” Clint said, and Phil’s chest ached at the softness of his voice. “Hope ya brought enough stuff.”

“I think I’ll manage,” Phil said, his own voice going soft and fond. “I’m about to make a grocery order; is there anything in particular you’d like me to get you?”

“Cheetos,” Clint said. “And, uh, I got a nutrition thing. Paper. Says some other stuff.”

“I’ll look when you get home,” Phil said, smiling.

“Kay. Oh, we’re ‘bout here, I gotta hang up now. I’ll see you inna minute, okay babe?”

“Okay,” Phil said, “I’ll see you soon.” He hung up, firmly resisting any impulse he might feel to linger, added Cheetos to his online cart, and did a last sweep of the room to make sure the path would be clear for Clint’s arrival. He imagined Stark had a medical transport company on retainer as well as the equipment supplier, so he didn’t go downstairs to lurk in the lobby; he’d only get in the way of the professionals.

The landline rang again, and Phil rushed to grab it, wondering if the medical supply people had forgotten something.

“Hello?” he said, keeping one ear on the hallway in case Clint didn’t have his key—had he mentioned if the squid had eaten his keys?

“Um,” a young woman’s voice said suspiciously. “Hi?”

“This is the Barton residence, may I help you?” Phil said.

“Who is—oh,” the caller said. “ _Oh_. Sorry, I was expecting Natasha. You must be the new boyfriend, right? The SHIELD agent? Phil, yeah?”

“I’m afraid you have the advantage, Ms.—”

“Oh! Sorry. It’s Kate. Bishop. The other Hawkeye.”

Light dawned. “Oh, of course! I’m sorry, Ms. Bishop, I should have realized. Clint’s told me so much about you, I almost forgot we haven’t actually met yet.”

“It’s just Kate,” said Kate. “And I could say the same thing; Clint talks about you a lot. Like, a _lot_.”

“I—really?” Phil felt his face heat. “I mean, I hope you haven’t heard anything too terrible.”

She giggled. “He keeps starting to tell me about how hot you are and then cutting himself off because he says I’m too young to hear it,” she said. “But I’ve heard enough to know that he’s been really happy, the last couple months, and I think that’s mostly on you, so good job.”

Phil swallowed, his chest warming. “Thanks,” he told Kate. “I, ah, I’ve been really happy, too. So I’m glad that you think, ah, he’s—that I—” Distantly, he heard some thumping in the hall and the sound of a key in the lock; he freed up his right hand, just in case it was a poorly-timed home invasion instead of Clint getting home.

“I mean, I’m still bound by the Hawkeye code of honor to avenge him if you break his heart,” Kate said, as the door opened and someone vaguely familiar—ah, the goth orderly from the hospital, that dye job was really distinctive—backed into the room, pulling a complicated-looking wheelchair containing Clint, looking sleepy and pained, with his swaddled leg sticking straight out in front of him.

“Of course,” Phil said absently, eyeing Clint up and down for signs of further injury. “I’m sorry, Ms. Bishop—”

“Kate.”

“Kate. Could you hold on for a moment, please? Clint just got home, and I need to get him settled. Or I could have him call you—”

“’Zat Kate?” Clint perked up. “Katie!” he called. “You got to meet Phil! Isn’t he great!”

Kate laughed. “Oh my god, is he high?”

“Painkillers,” Phil explained. “You heard about the squid?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Fuck AIM, seriously.”

“I absolutely agree,” Phil told her. “You have no idea.”

Clint had pulled his chair away from the orderly and was making his slightly wobbly way over toward the phone. “Phil, tell Katie aren’t you great,” he said, confusingly.

“Tell him I’ll call him back in ten,” Kate said, amusement bubbling in her tone. “Talk to you later, Phil.”

“Goodbye,” Phil said, then had to lean precariously over to hang the phone up, because Clint had managed to bring his wheelchair up alongside him and had grabbed him around the waist, squeezing tight.

“Hey, Phil,” he said, burying his head in Phil’s stomach. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” Phil said, stroking his hair. He glanced over to where the orderly had brought in a few bags and was stacking them out of the way next to the TV stand. “Thanks for bringing him home,” he said. “Would you mind helping me get him settled?” he inclined his head toward the hospital bed, covers turned down invitingly.

“Sure, no problem,” the orderly said.

“I don’ wanna go to bed,” Clint said, tugging at Phil’s shirt. “I’ve been in bed for _days_. And not inna fun way. You weren’t even there. I mean, you were _there_ , but not in bed. Because hospital.”

“I know,” Phil said, giving in to the temptation to bend down for a quick kiss to Clint’s roughened lips. “Tell you what, why don’t you get in the bed and get your leg propped up, and by the time you’re settled, Kate will call back, and you can rest comfortably while you talk to her, okay? And then we’ll see what you need to do afterward.”

Clint sighed. “I know what you’re doing, Phil,” he said, his brow furrowing like he was concentrating on his words. “’m fine, really. Just goin’ along with you ‘cause I know you worry.”

“I do worry,” Phil said. “Thanks for humoring me.” He grabbed the remote for the bed and lowered it until it was even with the seat of Clint’s wheelchair. He half turned. “What’s the best way to do this?” he asked, addressing Clint and the orderly both.

“M’ leg’s onna board… thing,” Clint said, waving at it. “An’ the arm on the chair folds down. I can do it, jus’ brace me some.”

“I’ll help with your leg,” the orderly said. “Like we did getting out of the van.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Phil said. “Need a hand with the chair, Clint?”

Clint huffed a tired little laugh. “Yeah, for now,” he said. “With th’meds and all…” he made a halfhearted, wobbly gesture. “I’d end up out th’window or something.”

“You just need time to heal,” Phil told him, pulling the chair up next to the bed and setting the brakes. He dropped the rail on the bed—he’d taken some time to familiarize himself with the controls—while Clint, after a few false starts, folded down the arm of the chair.

“Okay,” Clint said. “Ready.”

“I’ve got you,” Phil said, coming around behind Clint and leaning over, making sure his weight was braced.

“Here goes nothin’,” Clint muttered, and levered himself out of the chair with one hand on the armrest and one braced on Phil’s forearm. Phil watched carefully, poised for any issues, but even heavy medication couldn’t erase a lifetime of acrobatics training; Clint made the transfer easily, the orderly lifting the weight of his splinted leg along with him. Once Clint was solidly on the bed, Phil helped him settle, adjusting his pillows and the angle of the head of the bed while the orderly unstrapped Clint’s leg and settled him carefully on the foam prop that would keep it elevated. Clint had dressed for the journey in a stretched-out tee and a pair of cutoff sweats; not exactly elegant, but at least it wasn’t a hospital gown.

“Are you cold?” Phil asked, shrugging out of Clint’s hoodie and draping it around his shoulders. “There’s blankets on the bed, but I can get you more. Or some extra socks?” He knew from experience that elevating your leg tended to make your toes cold.

Clint caught him by the hand, tugging him gently closer. “’M fine, babe,” he said. “I just wanna rest a bit, ‘kay? An’ you can sit with me an’ read my five million handouts.”

“I—okay,” Phil said. He felt like he should be doing something more, but someone did have to check the care instructions, and Clint was probably too exhausted—not to mention medicated—to retain them at the moment.

“I’ll just be getting out of your hair, then,” the goth orderly said.

“Oh!” Phil shook his head. “I’m really sorry,” he said, getting his wallet out of his pocket and pulling out a fifty. “I didn’t mean to be rude.” He held out the cash, forcing himself to remember his manners and meet the man’s eye. “Thank you so much for taking care of Clint, Mr.—”

He finally registered what he was seeing and froze, his heart sinking and his face blazing with sudden heat.

“Rogers,” Captain America said gravely, his eyes dancing from under his terrible dye job. “And I appreciate it, but the tip really isn’t necessary.”

“You… dyed your hair,” Phil said stupidly.

Behind him, Clint cackled. “Oh my god,” he wheezed through fits of laughter. “ _Steve._ Oh my god. I _told_ you t’get it bleached.”

“I got inked,” Captain America said. “By the giant squid. I thought it would wash out by now, but…”

“I’m tellin’ Natasha,” Clint said, giggling. “God, where’s my phone, she’s gonna die. I’m changin’ your contact name to Captain Hot Topic. No. Captain Gothmerica? No, Captain Nemo! Because squid!”

“I am _so sorry_ ,” Phil told Captain America. His entire being was focused on trying to force himself to spontaneously develop some kind of superpowers. Time rewinding, that would be good. Or maybe teleportation so he could vanish from this plane of existence. Sadly, his genome remained stubbornly unenhanced. “I, ah, I’m afraid I was. Preoccupied.”

“And well you should be,” said Captain America kindly. “We’re all glad Clint has someone looking out for him. It was a pleasure to meet you, Agent, though I’m sure we all wish it were under better circumstances.”

“I’m Phil Coulson,” Phil said, suddenly remembering that he hadn’t introduced himself. To Captain America. This couldn’t be happening. “I mean, ah, since we aren’t at work, please call me Phil?”

“It’s good to meet you, Phil,” said Captain America. “Please, call me Steve.”

“Thank you, Cap—sir. Steve.”

Clint snickered. “Heh, Sir Steve. Hey, didn’ Queen Elizabeth knight you or somethin’ in the war, Sir Steve?”

Phil was possibly having a seizure.

“I can’t be a knight, I’m a US citizen,” Captain America said. He held out his hand, and Phil panicked and shoved the fifty into it.

Captain America looked down, his mouth suspiciously tight at the corners. He cleared his throat, and shook Phil’s hand, somehow transferring the bill back to Phil as he did so.

“I’ll see you both later,” he said. “Clint, let Phil take care of you, the more you rest the sooner you heal. Phil.” He nodded, and let himself out of the apartment, because he was a man of compassion; if Phil had tried to walk him to the door some other disaster might have occurred.

“Did that really jus’ happen, or am I hallucinatin’?” Clint said into the silence.

Phil facepalmed, and gave himself a paper cut with the fifty dollar bill.

Ow.

_“Fuck,”_ he said into his hands.

“Aww, Phil, ’s okay,” Clint said. “Hey, c’mere, siddown.” He patted the spot on the couch that was next to the head of his bed. Phil sat, and let Clint take his hand. At least Clint hadn’t disowned him on the spot for disrespect of his team leader or something.

“I can’t believe I tried to _tip_ Captain America,” Phil said.

“Don’ worry about it, baby,” Clint said. “He thought it was nice. He’s a big supporter of the workin’ man, y’know?”

“I was him for Halloween _twelve times_ ,” Phil said in despair. “How could I not have recognized him?”

“Okay, first, I wan’ pictures, I bet you were adorable, an’ second, his hair’s really awful. Plus, the firs’ day, his whole uniform was fulla ink, so he had t’ rock the scrubs. Though I gotta say, Phil, d’you really think there’re many orderlies walkin’ around with shoulders like that?”

“I mean… they have to lift people,” Phil said. “And, like, equipment and things. I wasn’t really thinking about it.”

Clint squeezed his hand, slowing down to enunciate carefully. “I dunno if I said, but I was really happy you were there.”

“You might have mentioned it,” Phil said, smiling a little in spite of himself. “I was happy to be there. I was really worried, when the notifications started hitting my phone. At least in the hospital I knew you were okay.”

The phone rang.

“That’ll be Katie,” Clint said. “D’you mind?”

“No, of course,” Phil said, and hurried to answer. “Barton residence.”

“Hey, Phil, is now a good time?”

“Yes, let me take the phone over,” Phil told her. Fortunately, Clint had an extra-long cord on the the handset; it looked like it would stretch at least everywhere on the first floor, if not everywhere in the apartment. Once Clint was happily settled in for a chat—it sounded like he was recounting the squid battle, complete with sound effects and hand gestures, and Phil was struck once again with a bolt of helpless affection—Phil picked up the sheaf of papers that Clint had brought home and sat on the couch to go through them. He’d need to finalize the grocery order, then figure out the schedule for Clint’s medication, and when he’d need to use the various machines the medical supply people had left, and when to expect visits from the home health aide and physical therapist that Stark had mentioned sending to Clint’s place. Maybe after his call, Clint would be ready for a light meal. And at some point Phil needed to call work and extend his leave; fortunately, he was still in a stand-down period after the last op, so all he had going were reports and research for the time being. He’d probably be able to telework a little, in a day or so once Clint was a bit more healed.

Clint laughed at something, raspy little giggles, uninhibited and charming; Phil reached out without looking up from his notes and his chest warmed when he felt Clint’s rough hand close around his and squeeze gently. He wasn’t happy Clint had been hurt, of course—nothing like that, not ever—but he couldn’t help feeling like just at the moment, he was exactly where he needed to be.

* * *

 

 

Clint slept fitfully Wednesday night, sore from the journey home and reluctant to take his full dose of painkillers, so it was a relief to them both when he finally relented the next morning and let himself be medicated in anticipation of his first in-home therapy appointment that day. He was nervously excited; if the bone-stimulating machine had worked well enough, he’d be allowed to start doing some very limited weight-bearing on his bad leg, which would mean an end to the hated bedpan regime. Phil was bitterly annoyed when, just after the therapist arrived, he was interrupted in the vital task of providing moral support by his work phone’s shrill ring.

“I’m sorry,” he told Clint. “They know I’m on leave, so if they’re still calling—”

“It’s okay,” Clint said, patting at his hand a little clumsily. “I unnerstand. Work. S’work.”

“Yeah,” Phil agreed. He bent down for a gentle kiss, absently noting that Clint’s lips were still chapped; he should pick him up some stronger salve. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

Phil climbed the loft steps two at a time to where he’d left his phone plugged in, next to Clint’s bed; he’d been perfectly willing to sleep on the couch in the living room, but Clint had put his metaphorical foot down, saying at least one of them should get a good night’s sleep. Phil had made sure Clint’s phone was at hand, as well as one of Lucky’s squeaky toys that made an unholy noise when squeezed, in case Clint needed Phil in the night.

When he came back downstairs, wearing slacks, a dress shirt, and what he was pretty sure was a sour expression, Clint’s leg had acquired a new, complicated-looking brace. Clint himself was upright, albeit a bit unsteady, on a pair of crutches.

“Now that’s a sight for sore eyes,” Phil told him, dropping his grumpy face for a smile so wide it felt like it would crack his cheeks. He wasn’t quite prepared for how relieved he was to see Clint upright again.

Clint grinned. “I’m great at healin’,” he told him.

Linda, the therapist, laughed. “I’d suggest that’s something you should try to practice less, Clint, but I’m pretty sure that’s a lost cause by now.”

Clint shrugged. “Ah, y’know. ’S the job.” He looked over at Phil, squinting like he was trying to remember something. “Um. Job. What—oh! You gotta go in to work, babe?”

Phil sighed. “Just for a few hours,” he said. “After that, I can do everything remotely for a few weeks, but there are some things that still won’t take an e-signature, and they need me for one more debriefing from my last mission.” He paused, hoping that Clint wouldn’t take this the wrong way. “Can I call someone to come stay with you while I’m gone? Natasha maybe, or one of the neighbors? I know you can take care of yourself, but… I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

Clint took a tentative step towards Phil, starting to reach out before remembering his crutch and hastily putting his hand back on the grip. “Hey, ’s okay,” he said. “I’ll call someone, um, Kate or Nat or someone. Don’ want you t’worry.”

Phil stepped in close, tilting his head to rest against Clint’s and curving his arm around to rest lightly on Clint’s shoulder without unbalancing him. The sucker bruises had progressed to a colorful range of purples and greens, and Clint smelled a little like acrid hospital sweat and a lot like rubbing alcohol and latex, but Phil’s heart still fluttered in his chest at feeling him, warm and near.

“Thank you,” he said, and kissed his favorite unbruised patch of skin on Clint’s cheekbone, and then another at his temple, where the close-cropped hair grew soft and fine. “I’ll be back by four, all right? And we’ll do something for dinner.” 

“All right, gentlemen, enough canoodling,” Linda said. “This one’s got a lot of work to do.”

Clint kissed Phil’s nose, then straightened up. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Bye, Phil.” 

Phil got his bag out of the closet and went to the door reluctantly. “Take care,” he said. “Call me if you need anything.”

Clint nodded, his face creased with concentration as he started walking forward again, Linda hovering at his side. “I will.”

Phil took a last look and then forced himself to stop hovering. The sooner he left, the sooner he’d be done, after all.

He texted Natasha on his way to the train, just in case.


	7. In Which Clint Totally Means Well But That Doesn’t Really Help

Phil got back at 4:17: essentially on time, in his opinion, given city traffic at that time of day and the inconvenience of traveling between SHIELD and Brooklyn without the benefit of a car service. Clint had texted him a somewhat mysterious request to pick up some ice, so he’d stopped at the bodega on the corner for two bags and an overpriced styrofoam cooler (in light of the relative sizes of Clint’s freezer and Phil’s grocery order from the day before.)

Having hauled his dripping burden up the stairs, Phil set it down long enough to open the door. It was still a little thrilling, if he was honest, to enter Clint’s apartment using his own key; there was something deeply reassuring about the ordinariness of it, the assumption that Phil belonged there somehow. As he stepped through the door, still a little distracted and trying to juggle keys and laptop bag and cooler and ice, something hit his chest with a thud. His instincts kicked in, and he dropped everything he was carrying to dive for cover behind the kitchen island, his heart hammering as he pulled his weapon.

 _Clint,_ he thought despairingly, sniffing the air and only marginally reassured to smell neither cordite nor blood. Oh _god_ , what had happened, where was Clint’s security, had he—had he—

With a skittering of claws and a happy bark, Lucky scampered around the island—startling the life out of Phil for the second time in a few seconds—and licked a broad wet stripe up the side of Phil’s head.

“Sorry!” called a voice he didn’t recognize.

Phil peered around the edge of the island. He didn’t put down his gun, but he was starting to think he might have overreacted; home invaders didn’t usually apologize, in his experience.

There was a stranger sitting in Clint’s wheelchair, parked a few feet away from the island. Crouched down as he was, the first thing Phil noticed was a pair of heavily-scarred legs in a pair of hot pink short-shorts; looking up, he saw an improbable Hawaiian shirt with a print of kittens riding unicorns, and then a red-and-black hood that Phil recognized instantly from SHIELD dossiers: Deadpool, notorious mercenary and assassin. He was holding an assault rifle by the barrel, the stock dangling near the floor.

Phil went hot, and then cold.

“What did you do to him,” he said in a voice he hardly recognized.

“Huh? Oh! Hey, no,” Deadpool said. “It’s not like that, we’re buddies. Clint! Your bae’s here!”

“Phil!”

Phil went limp with relief as Clint zipped into view. He was seated in a wheelchair Phil hadn’t seen before, though calling it a wheelchair seemed about as appropriate as calling an Aston Martin Valkyrie a “car.” It was low-slung and nimble-looking and technological and seemed to be made of equal parts carbon fiber and red-and-gold alloy; it was the Iron Man armor of wheelchairs.

“Hey, Phil, I finally opened that crate Tony left me,” Clint said excitedly. “And check it out! _Hover chair!”_ He flipped a switch on the arm of the chair, and the wheels folded up as the chair rose a few inches into the air with a high-pitched whine that was far too like the sound of Iron Man’s repulsors for comfort.

“Oh god,” Phil said.

Lucky barked and dropped something wet and slimy in Phil’s lap. A tennis ball; on seeing it, the strange impact to Phil’s chest—which, upon further thought, had not been nearly heavy enough to be anything dangerous—made sense.

“Can you toss that over here?” Deadpool asked.

Phil did.

Deadpool swung the assault rifle like a croquet mallet, hitting the tennis ball with the stock. It ricocheted off the front door—that explained _that,_ then—and bounced into the living room, Lucky gambolling lopsidedly after it with his tongue lolling out the side of his mouth like a joyous, dribbling streamer.

“We’re playing wheelchair polo,” Deadpool informed him. Behind him, Clint held up a broom.

“Of course,” Phil said faintly, re-holstering his service weapon. “How silly of me not to realize.” He stood up from behind the island, hoping he didn’t look as absurd as he felt. He was still a little sick from the wave of adrenaline that had swept him when he’d seen Deadpool sitting in Clint’s wheelchair with a gun.

“Phil Coulson,” he said, pulling himself together and offering his hand; Clint was obviously fine with Deadpool being there, which meant that Phil needed to be fine with it, too.

You kind of sign yourself up for these sorts of things, when you date an Avenger.

“Okay, okay, I concede the point,” Deadpool said, apparently at random; he wasn’t looking at Clint or Phil, but somewhere in the middle distance off to the side. He took Phil’s hand, turned it palm-down, and raised it up to a few inches in front of his mouth—er, the place where Phil assumed his mouth was, under the seamless red fabric. Deadpool kissed the air above Phil’s hand with a smacking, theatrical _mwah_ noise.

“Wade Wilson, good sir,” he said. “And may I just say that it is an honor to meet you at last. I’ve always shipped flint hardcore.”

“…thanks?” Phil said, not sure how rocks or the shipment thereof came into anything.

“Wade’s a friend of mine, babe,” Clint said, swooping in closer in his hover chair. “Kate came by, earlier. She needed to drop Lucky off early—there was some kind of shenanigans afoot in a parallel dimension, her girlfriend came through a portal to pick her up right after. So I thought I’d see if Wade wanted to come hang out, since you didn’t want me to be alone.”

Deadpool—Wade—dropped Phil’s hand to hold both his own up in front of his chest in a heart shape. “I couldn’t say no to my BFF!” he said. “Not in his hour of need!”

“That’s very kind of you,” Phil said, falling back on his soothe-the-alien-VIP manners for lack of any better ideas.

“You’re right, Clint, he’s sweet,” Wade said, and Phil’s face heated a bit when Clint beamed at him.

“He _really_ is,” Clint said. “Did I tell you about the time with the chocolate-flavored—”

“Did they change your meds?” Phil interrupted, because that was a _very private_ memory and he really would rather not share it with a possibly-immortal assassin, no matter how friendly.

“Yup!” Clint said cheerfully. “The other stuff was makin’ me all sleepy. This stuff’s better!”

Phil edged around Deadpool’s wheelchair to get a better look at Clint. He did look more alert, but his pupils were constricted, and Phil thought his face was a little flushed under the residual bruising. “You feeling okay, though?” he murmured, reaching out to stroke a gentle thumb over Clint’s cheek. Wade made an “awwwwww” noise; Phil ignored it, for the sake of his own sanity.

“I’m better now you’re home,” Clint said, then did something to the controls of his chair that made it shoot several feet higher into the air so that their faces were level. “Kiss me,” he demanded, leaning over and making the chair bobble alarmingly.

Phil grabbed the arm of the chair, trying to stabilize it, and leaned in for a kiss. Despite everything, it still made knots in his shoulders unfurl, the evidence that Clint was there, safe and happy and glad to see him.

To see him _home_. That’s what he’d said.

“You guys are adorable,” Wade said. “Hey, Phil, did you bring the ice?”

Phil bit back a sigh. “Assuming the bags didn’t break when I dropped them,” he said, pointing at the doorway. “Did we use up everything in the freezer?”

“No, we just needed some extra for when the team gets here,” Clint said, zooming over to the door and trying to use the broom handle to pick up the ice without lowering the chair.

“…which team,” Phil said.

“Oh! Yeah, sorry, I forgot to text you. I was telling Wade about how we were gonna go to team dinner tonight, an’ how you worked so hard on all those cheesecakes and stuff and now we couldn’t go because the squid, so Wade said if I can’t go to team dinner why can’t we have team dinner go to me? So I called Jan and told her we’d have it here instead.”

Phil stared at Clint. “Clint.”

Clint bobbed happily by the door, still fishing for the ice. “Yeah, baby?”

“Just… just to clarify,” Phil said. “You invited the Avengers to dinner. Here. Tonight.”

“Eight pm,” Clint said. “Wade, could you hand me the—” Wade handed him the rifle, barrel first, and Clint took it, trying to use it and the broom like a pair of tongs. “We pushed the time back to give ‘em time to get to Brooklyn.”

Phil’s hands and feet were tingling and cold. He might possibly be about to have a heart attack. He’d actually handled it better when he thought Wade was a home invader. “I have to made dinner for the Avengers in _three and a half hours?_ ” His voice climbed precariously at the end.

“Naw, it’s potluck, remember?” Clint had somehow managed to balance one of the ice bags on the end of the broom, and tossed it gently into the sink like he was playing that game with the balls and the scoop things—jai alai, that was it. “They’ll bring the food, it’s cool, you can just get out your cheesecakes an’ shit.”

The ice bag, of course, hit the sink dead-on. This was _Clint,_ after all.

Phil looked around the apartment. The hospital bed had been pushed aside—to make room for wheelchair polo, Phil guessed—and the walls were speckled with damp-looking patches that he assumed were due to impacts with a sodden tennis ball. The lamp in the corner had its shade knocked askew. The PT equipment had been knocked off its rack, the half of the kitchen sink with no ice in it was full of dirty dishes, and the counter was full of crumbs and the apparent remnants of meals. Phil counted the heels of three loaves of bread; a jar of peanut butter and one of Nutella, each with a knife sticking out of it; the leafy ends of what seemed to be a whole bunch of celery; the envelopes from two packets of chicken bullion; and the tiny foil wrappers from an uncountable number of Hershey’s kisses.

As Phil watched, Lucky stood his front paws up on the counter, knocked off the peanut butter jar, and stuck his snout into it.

“Aww, dog, no,” Clint said.

“Please excuse me for a moment,” Phil managed, and darted into the bathroom. He gripped the edge of the sink so hard his knuckles turned white and tried not to panic.

Okay, he tried not to panic _more_.

He’d entirely forgotten about Team Dinner, was the thing; he’d gotten the scare of his life on Monday afternoon, before he knew Clint would be all right, and once he’d gotten to the hospital he’d been far too preoccupied with Clint for his social calendar—never the highest of Phil’s priorities—to register at all in his attention.

So not only had he not remembered dinner, he hadn’t remembered all the plans he’d made for dinner, and even now several of Clint’s neighbors were, at least if they’d followed the handout, thawing enough cheesecake to feed… well, to feed the Avengers, or at least the ones who’d RSVPed.

Oh god, he had a car service booked for five-thirty.

“Deep breaths, Coulson,” he muttered. “You can do this.” He could pretend it was a mission. He was good at missions.

Anyhow, he’d already made a hopeless fool of himself in front of Captain America. What more could—

He cut the thought off before he could finish it. No need to tempt fate.

Okay. Okay. He could do this. He just needed a plan.

He pulled his small notepad from his pocket and started a list. He’d need to pick up the cheesecakes, and pick up the apartment—shit, wasn’t someone bringing a toddler? He’d need to _baby proof_ the apartment—and make sure there was room for what everyone was bringing…

Several minutes of scribbling later, he emerged from the bathroom. Lucky, who was sulking in his bed with a wet and no longer peanut-buttery muzzle, looked up and then put his head down between his paws with a sigh.

Clint looked over from where was using his broom to sweep between the slats on the loft stairs. “Phil? You okay?”

“Diarrhea is like a storm raging inside you,” Wade said, nodding gravely from where he was sitting in lotus position on the top of the kitchen island. He had his katana drawn and seemed to be using it to pick up food wrappers from the floor.

Phil coughed. “I’m fine,” he said. He paused awkwardly, not sure how to ask “are you planning to stay to dinner, and if so, do I need to worry about any of the other guests trying to arrest and/or kill you” without being insulting to Clint’s friend.

Then he remembered that Clint’s friend was Deadpool.

“Are you planning on staying for dinner, Wade?” He asked. “I’m afraid I’m not aware of the current state of, er, relations between you and the Avengers.”

Wade waved his katana airily, nearly decapitating a lamp. “We’re cool, bro,” he said. “I’m currently on the heroic end of my anti-hero’s journey.”

“…good,” Phil said. “Good. So, ah, if you have the time, I could use some help getting things ready for this evening.”

“Say no more, my good man,” Wade said. “I am at your service. How can I help?”

Phil took a deep breath. “I have a list,” he said.

“Awesome!” Wade’s face moved beneath his mask in a way that Phil was fairly sure meant he was grinning. “Bring it on.”

                                                                                                    

_1\. Cheesecakes: collection, toppings_

“Jasper,” Phil said, tucking his phone between his head and his shoulder as he took the plastic containers of macerated fruit out of Clint’s fridge. “I’m calling in a favor.”

Jasper sighed gustily. “Is this an El Segundo favor or a Tuktoyaktuk favor?”

“It’s a Scunthorpe favor,” Phil said, pulling the stash of Valrhona couverture he’d acquired that weekend out from behind an ancient box of Grape Nuts in Clint’s cupboard.

“What do you need,” Jasper said, his voice suddenly serious, “and do I need to get more guns first?”

“Just the normal amount of guns will do,” Phil assured him, crouching down to look in the cabinets for the double boiler he’d brought from home during his cheesecake-production spree. “But bring your trainees; I need a lot of extra hands. Clint just told me he invited the Avengers over for dinner tonight.”

There was silence for a few seconds.

“We’ll be there in forty,” Jasper promised. “I’ll tell them it’s a skill-building exercise.”

                                                                                                    

_4\. Food table/cheesecake buffet? Stiffen hospital bed, use as additional surface?_

_7\. More ice. Drinks (pop, beer, water, coffee)_

“Wade,” Phil said, whisking the caramel sauce steadily. “Would you be willing to run a few errands for me?”

Wade somersaulted off the railing around the loft stairs, landing with a noise that made Phil wince before bouncing over to the kitchen. “Whatcha got?”

“We’re going to use Clint’s hospital bed as an additional serving table,” Phil told him, “but we need a board or something to put over the mattress. And we need more ice and drinks—there’s a list on the counter.”

Wade picked up the list, skimmed it, nodded to himself, then jammed it over one of the prongs of a shuriken before tucking it—somewhat precariously—into his belt. “I can do that,” he said. “I assume you’d prefer I don’t use the grenades?”

“I would appreciate that, yes,” Phil said, keeping an eye on the candy thermometer. It would be time to add the butter soon.

“Back in a jiff,” Deadpool said, and climbed out the window.

Phil wasn’t going to ask.

                                                                                                    

_10\. Verify guest list_

From: doitwaspstyle@avengers.org

To: pjcoulson@securemail.net

Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Team Dinner moving to the Hawk’s Nest!!

Phil, thanks so much for writing! Please don’t put yourself out for tonight, we all know you’ve been busy taking care of Clint’s poor leg this week. I promise it will all be really low key! We were going to cancel, but Clint was really insistent that we not spoil it for you. I admit I’m really flattered you’re so eager to meet the team! I’ve heard so much about you from the others, I can’t wait to meet you, and to try the cheesecakes! Yum!!!!!!

The final RSVP list I have is:

Steve

Tony

Me (Jan)

Jessica and Luke with Dani (they’ll bring their own booster seat for her)

Natasha

Bruce

Carol

Peter

Logan

;-D

Jan van Dyne

                                                                                                    

_11\. BABYPROOF_

“Oh!” Clint lifted his head from where he was collecting a small arsenal of arrows, knives, and handguns from under and inside the sofa. Lucky, pawing under the sofa next to him, unearthed a soggy tennis ball and a spare clip for a Beretta and yipped proudly, earning himself an ear-ruffle. “Panel on the kitchen island. In case I haveta take cover.”

Phil crouched down and tapped until he found a hollow space, then used a convenient knothole to pry the cover off the hidden compartment. He pulled out a sawn-off shotgun (loaded), a quiver of (he thought) putty and net arrows, and another three knives.

Clint was an Avenger and he lived in a building periodically plagued by eruptions of mobsters, so Phil understood the need to stash weapons around the place, but this was starting to get ridiculous.

Also, he’d forgotten to ask Wade to buy those things you put in electrical sockets so babies couldn’t stick their fingers in.

“Where’s your duct tape?” he asked Clint.

                                                                                                    

_19\. Set “table”_

“See, Phil?” Wade said, dropping the board onto the hospital bed. It bounced a little on the mattress and then settled. “It’s the perfect size!”

“Great job,” Phil said. The board looked like it was covered with vinyl on one side, white with giant red letters that said WO. The “O” was serving as the halo for a drawing that Phil thought was supposed to be the Virgin Mary. It looked vaguely familiar, and also suspiciously like it had been hacked out of a larger piece with, say, a katana. “Where did you find it?”

Wade fiddled with the black bow tie he was now wearing—with a matching cummerbund—over his usual red-and-black outfit. He’d left wearing the shorts and kitten shirt; Phil hadn’t questioned the change. “You know that big tacky sign a couple blocks over that says ‘MARRIAGE MEANS ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN’?” he said.

Phil sighed. “I’m familiar.”

Then he looked back down at the board, awareness slowly dawning.

“It was totally homophobic and offensive, plus I felt it was an affront to your and Clint’s epic romance,” Wade said. “So I fixed it.”

Phil pictured the sign, then mentally subtracted the relevant portion. He grinned.

“I appreciate your civic-mindedness,” he said.

“You know, I get that surprisingly often,” Deadpool said. “Sometimes in really weird circumstances.”

“Hey Phil!” Clint called from the window. “Sitwell just pulled up in a van with a bunch of people.”

“That’s his trainee class. They needed some field work,” Phil said, crossing to the door to buzz them in.

“Awesome,” Clint said happily. “I wanna meet your friends, too, y’know? I know it’s hard, cause missions, but we should have a team dinner for your team some time.”

“I—yeah,” Phil said, his chest squeezing a little. “Maybe once you heal up? It isn’t that I didn’t want you to meet them, I just… I didn’t know you’d want to.”

Clint looked over, puzzled. “Course I do,” he said. “S’ your people, right? Course I wanna meet them.”

“Then we’ll do it,” Phil promised. “I don’t know when, but. We will.”

Clint grinned, sunny and satisfied despite the slightly unfocused look from the meds, and Phil smiled helplessly back, standing in the middle of the floor like a dumbass.

“Ah, amour,” Wade said dreamily. “Gotta love some good fluff.”

Jasper knocked on the door, the all-clear pattern.

“I’ll get it!” Wade said, and Phil had to leap halfway across the room to get the door before he could; he didn’t want to test the trigger discipline of a batch of trainees first thing out of the gate.

“Agent Sitwell,” he said, nodding thankfully at Jasper. “Agents. Please come in. Don’t shoot Deadpool, he’s a friendly.”

One of the trainees made a little _eep_ noise.

“You’re good people, Phil,” Wade said, making a heart with his hands again.

“Hey, izzat Sitwell? Hey, Sitwell, good to meetcha, dude,” Clint said, rolling over enthusiastically and narrowly missing Wade’s foot. “And baby SHIELDs! Hey, baby SHIELDs, thanks for comin’ over, you wanna drink or anything? We got beer an’ pop.”

“Is that… Hawkeye?” one of the trainees asked. “Sir?”

“That’s classified,” Jasper told him.

“Shhhhh,” Clint said, giggling, then gave the agent a large, exaggerated wink.

Jasper’s eyes got very large. He caught Phil’s eye and mouthed YOU OWE ME.

Phil nodded. BIG TIME, he mouthed back.

                                                                                                    

_22\. Set up cheesecake buffet (GF BY ITSELF)_

“Here is the last of the materiel, sir,” Agent Jenkins said, handing him a stack of three foil-wrapped cheesecakes like she thought it might be a bomb.

To be fair, she might actually think that. Phil hadn’t asked what Jasper had told them all.

“Good work, Agent,” he said briskly, and she flushed a little. “Please join Agents Melvin and Romero in the living room. You’re looking for any concealed weapons or hazards. Also, please make sure all cabinet doors and electrical outlets are secure.” He handed her the duct tape. “Watch the paint.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

Another tentative knock at the door. That’d be Agent Hollingsworth with the gluten-free cheesecake; Phil had wanted to make sure it stayed segregated from its wheat-laced brethren.

“Sir,” Agent Romero called from the living room. “Does it count if the curtain rod is sharpened on the ends?”

                                                                                                    

_26\. Make coffee_

Phil stared in horror at the coffee maker. “Clint, when was the last time you de-scaled this?”

Clint blinked at him in confusion. “What d’ya mean? I wash the pot.”

                                                                                                    

_26. ~~Make coffee~~ clean coffeemaker_

_27\. Make coffee_

                                                                                                    

_32\. Change (me and Clint)_

Phil looked around. Jasper had swept up his trainees and taken them off for post-training debrief and pizza; Wade was using his katana to slice bits off a lavender yoga mat and was duct-taping them to the corners of the furniture. Lucky was flopped on his bed, chewing industriously on an extra-big rawhide Phil had unearthed from the emergency keep-the-dog-busy-so-we-can-get-laid stash, and Clint was zooming around in his hover chair, giggling to himself. Phil’d set out disposable plates, napkins, and cutlery on the makeshift hospital bed/table, using an extra clean sheet as a tablecloth to spare any uncomfortable questions about the source of the board. The cheesecakes, safely stowed in their cake boxes, were neatly arranged on the kitchen counters, and the toppings were finished and keeping warm or cool, as needed. The coffeepot was filled and ready to brew, and an assortment of other beverages were chilling in a large cooler that Wade had procured; the side of it was stenciled with the logo for Bellevue, but there were no obvious stains, so Phil had decided not to ask questions. They’d swept the apartment for weapons and hazards, and duct-taped all the cabinets and electrical outlets.

He was… done with prep. He thought. At least, anything else he did would be more to assuage his nerves than to serve any real purpose.

He glanced down at himself; he was dusty and a bit sticky, and had a wet streak of mysterious origin across his stomach.

“Do you want to change before dinner?” he asked Clint, who was hovering near the ceiling in his StarkChair, poking at something in the light fixture that was either an AIM listening device or the remnants of a bad DIY ceiling fan install attempt.

“If you’ll help me get outta my clothes,” Clint said, trying for a flirty leer and landing pretty far short. Heaven help him, Phil still thought it was cute.

“I won’t look!” Wade called, waving his tattered yoga mat like a flag. “No promises about listening, though. Mm.”

“There’ll be nothing to listen to,” Phil said. “Since the Avengers are going to be here in half an hour. But of course I’ll help, Clint.” He went to the coat closet where he’d stashed Clint’s clothes. “Any preferences?”

“You pick,” Clint said. He scudded the StarkChair over the railing into the loft. “Hey, Phil! Check it! I c’n get upstairs now!” There was a sharp thud that shook dust loose from the ceiling. “Ow. I’m okay!”

“Please be careful,” Phil said, grabbing a clean pair of gray track pants, a t-shirt with a purple target on it, and a dark purple button-up shirt from the closet and hurrying up the loft stairs.

Clint was parked in the space between the railing and the bed, the comforter half dragged off and under his wheels.

“Not a lot of clearance,” Phil observed, setting Clint’s clothes on the end of the bed and peeling out of his dirty shirt. “Maybe let me bring the clothes to you next time.”

“You’re pretty,” Clint said. He propped his elbow on the arm of his chair and his chin on his hand and batted his eyelashes up at Phil. “C’mere.”

“We’ve got company,” Phil reminded him, but he stepped in close. Clint leaned forward and rested his head on Phil’s torso, rubbing him with his cheek like a cat.

“Fuzzy,” he said happily. “’S nice.”

Phil cupped the back of his head, running his fingers through the short hair. “How’re you feeling? Sure you’re up for company tonight?”

“I’m fiiiiiine,” Clint said. He nodded, scrubbing his face against Phil’s belly. “‘M not gonna cancel, you did all that work! Plus Tony’s comin’, I wanna thank ‘im for the, y’know. Stuff.” He patted the arm of his chair clumsily.

Phil bent and kissed his head. “Let’s get you dressed then, hm?”

Clint sighed. “Kay.” He reached down and started tugging on his shirt hem, without moving his head away from Phil. He got it worked up to his armpits, flailed a little, then sagged. “Help?”

Phil kissed him again—he couldn’t not—and pulled away, petting Clint’s hair when he made a disappointed little noise. “Arms,” he said, and Clint raised his arms, letting Phil peel the shirt off his bruise-mottled torso. Phil took a deep breath, reminding himself that Clint was going to be fine. He helped him put on the t-shirt, then unzipped the bottoms of the track pants. “Can you lift your hips?”

Clint waggled his eyebrows. “For you? Anytime, baby.” He grabbed the handles of his chair and lifted himself up, grunting a little.

“Don’t stop on my account!” Wade yelled from downstairs. “I’m not looking!” Lucky barked, as if agreeing with him.

Phil ignored him in favor of pulling Clint’s sweatpants down over his hips as quickly as he could. “Got it,” he said, and Clint settled back in the seat. Phil stretched the pants around his cast, careful not to jostle him, then pulled them the rest of the way off and replaced them with the track pants, easing them up. Clint raised up again when he got the pants to mid-thigh, and Phil quickly settled them in place and patted his hip to let him know he could sit again.

Clint sighed. “‘F I wasn’t so sore…” he said wistfully, looking down at where Phil was crouched in front of him.

“We’ve got time,” Phil assured him, pulling clean socks over his cold toes. “You need some slippers. I’ll get some in the next Amazon order.” He helped Clint into the button-down and smoothed it over his torso, making sure it wasn’t caught between his body and the chair. “There,” he said, rubbing gently over Clint’s arm. Clint smiled up at him, open and sweet, and Phil felt a belated and useless surge of panic; he could have lost this, lost _Clint,_ and he wouldn’t have even known it until it was too late. If the squid had grabbed Clint by the chest instead of the leg—

“Babe?” Clint blinked up at him, his forehead creasing. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Phil said. Obviously he needed to spend some time processing before _that_ emotional landmine blew up at an inopportune time, but today was not the day. He took a deep breath and focused firmly on the issues at hand. “Just woolgathering, sorry.”

Clint tugged on Phil’s hand until he bent down for another quick kiss. “It’s gonna be fine,” he said. “They’re gonna love you.”

Phil managed a small smile, then saw Clint’s alarm clock and swore. “Shit, I have to change, it’s almost eight,” he said.

“Don’t let me stop you,” Clint said, waggling his eyebrows sloppily.

“Me either!” Wade called.

Phil sighed, and did his best to ignore Clint’s appreciative expressions and Wade’s catcalls—he peeked over the railing, and was oddly gratified to see that Wade was indeed staring determinedly at a blank wall—while he changed. He wasn’t meeting the Avengers in his official capacity, so he reluctantly passed over his suits in favor of a pair of dark jeans, a white button-down, and a soft blue sweater that Clint had given him for Christmas.

“I like that on you,” Clint told him earnestly. “Brings out your eyes.”

“So you’ve said.” Phil smiled, confidence bolstered a little. He wouldn’t say that he was nervous about his clothes, but… well. It _was_ Tony Stark who apparently made Armani suits “just happen” to Clint’s wardrobe. Phil felt he had a certain obligation not to let down the side.

“You should roll up your sleeves,” Clint said. “It’s hot.”

Phil frowned, “I can turn down the thermostat,” he suggested.

Clint laughed, a sudden, snorting thing. “No, I mean, I mean,” he said. “ _You’re_ hot. When you. With your arms an’ all.” He gestured at his own forearms.

“Oh,” Phil said, his face heating. “I, ah. Thanks.” He rolled up his sleeves. It was practical, really. He wouldn’t want to drag his sleeves through the food.

“C’mere,” Clint said, making grabby hands in Phil’s direction. When Phil stepped as close as he could get without bumping his cast, Clint stroked his palms over Phil’s chest. “Soft. But hard. Like. Muscley. But fuzzy. I like you.”

“I like you too,” Phil said. Medicated Clint was hopelessly adorable; it was a good thing there really wasn’t a practical way to weaponize his clumsy pets and look of open affection.

Of course, it was possible they wouldn’t work as well on other people as they did on Phil. Probably for the best.

The door buzzer sounded just as Phil was tying his shoes.

“I’ll get it!” Wade called. Phil heard a scuffle and a thump, then “Hawkeye’s House of Love and Arrows, how may I direct your call?”

“Um,” said a woman’s voice. “Hi? It’s Jan, I’m here for dinner?”

“Come right up!” Wade said perkily, buzzing her in. “Clint and Phil are just getting their pants back on.”

“…I know I’m a little early,” she said. It was hard to tell through the intercom, but Phil thought she sounded pretty dubious. He looked at Clint, wondering if he should intervene, but Clint was shaking with silent laughter, so apparently he wasn’t too concerned.

“Completely fine!” Wade said. “Please, come up.”

“Okay, I’ll see you in a minute,” she said. Phil stood, fully intending to be there to greet her at the door, except that Clint had much the same idea. His wheel had gotten tangled up in the comforter somehow, and when he tried to engage the hover function, the chair started skewing around wildly, taking ten years off Phil’s life as he envisioned Clint getting flung off the loft and landing headfirst on the hardwood floor below. It took several minutes of careful detangling—and _not_ accepting the loan of Wade’s katana—before Phil was able to free the wheel.

“Once you get down, you are _staying_ down,” he told Clint, trying to get his heart rate to settle.

“That’s what she said!” Wade called, and just then someone knocked. Lucky abandoned his chewie and ran over to jump up on the door, barking and wagging his tail.

Phil looked down for a moment, torn, then shrugged and turned back to Clint. “Can you try to hover down the stairs this time?” he asked, aware that his voice was closer to pleading than he’d really have preferred. “Just to spare me the heart palpitations?”

“Just f’r you, baby,” Clint said, patting Phil’s cheek. “I’m fine, really, I got great balance.”

“Usually, yes,” Phil said, backing down the stairs first in an attempt to cushion any possible falls. Clint gave him an indulgent look and started nudging the chair down slowly. “But you’re not exactly operating at a hundred percent right now.”

Phil heard the door open, and then a fusillade of joyous barks and a woman gasping; he stole a glance over his shoulder to see Lucky apparently doing his best to lick the face off a tiny brunette woman, who was staggering backwards under the onslaught.

“Lucky, _down!_ ” he called sharply, making his voice carry. “No!”

Lucky backed up reluctantly, and Wade dragged him back into the room. “That’s no way to treat a lady,” Wade told Lucky severely. He then turned to face the woman—on second look and minus the dog, Phil recognized her as Wasp—and performed a sweeping curtsey to her.

“Please accept our apologies, ma’am,” Wade said.

“Oh,” said Wasp. “Well, that explains it. Hi, Wade.”

“Hey, Jan,” Clint called, raising the hover chair a little to wave at her over Phil’s shoulder. Phil glared at him until he lowered it back down. Phil watched him closely as he hovered down sedately, though the mischievous look on his face made it clear that the caution was entirely for Phil’s benefit. “Be down in a minute.”

Which was fine; whatever it took to make sure Clint didn’t break any additional bones before the first set were even half healed.

Once Clint was firmly on solid ground (and had re-engaged the actual wheels), Phil turned. “Please excuse—” he started to say, but was cut off by a delighted cry.

“Are you Phil? You are, right? Clint’s showed me so many pictures, but he’s right, you really are even more handsome in person. Have you ever modeled? You obviously know how to wear clothes.” She clasped her hands in front of her in delight, beaming at him. “Oh! I’m sorry. Janet Van Dyne,” she said, “but you can call me Jan, of course, I’ve heard so much about you I feel as if I know you already!”

“Phil,” Phil said, feeling a little overwhelmed. “Coulson. Very nice to meet you, Jan.”

“Are you a hugger? I mean, can I hug you? Because I already knew that you were good for Clint, he’s been so happy since you started dating, but Natasha and Steve told me all about how sweet you’ve been, taking care of him all week and everything, and I just want to _thank_ you for seeing how great he is, you know? And being there for him! But I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“I… that’s… fine?” Phil said, and Jan flung herself at him with a very solid impact for such a small person, squeezing him hard before letting go and looking up at him with big bright eyes.

“I toldya,” Clint said, snickering.

“I know,” Jan and Phil said at the same time, which only made Clint’s laughter grow.

“May I take your coat?” Phil asked, managing to regain possession of his manners.

“Such a gentleman!” She turned to let him help her off with her coat, which was a sunny yellow with shiny black buttons. Phil wondered if all the Avengers dressed in their theme colors, or if they just tended to pick a favorite color when designing their battle gear. He hung her coat in the part of the closet where he hadn’t put Clint’s clothes.

“I have to admit, I didn’t think you’d fit us all in here,” Jan was telling Clint, “but you’ve done a good job with the setup.”

“Phil’s the logistics guy,” Clint said, smiling at Phil. “He and Wade transformed the place this afternoon. Just as badass at dinner as fighting crime, I guess.”

The intercom buzzed again. “Yo, Wade! It’s Reynaldo! I got your chimichangas! Also some big white dude with like, knife hands is here, want I should let him in?”

Team Dinner had begun.

                                                                                                    


	8. Team Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Dinner. The Avengers Team Potluck. It was like the setup to an over-elaborate joke: eleven superheroes, one toddler, a SHIELD agent, a one-eyed dog, and Deadpool walk (or fly, or swing) into a loft in Bed-Stuy…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are again! I got sick for a few weeks AND this chapter was too long and had to get split in half, but here is Team Dinner, arrived at last. I do hope you enjoy.

Phil’s life had always tended toward the indescribable. It was something of an occupational hazard, after all; if he hadn’t wanted weird in his life, he could have stayed in the Army, or let himself be recruited by the FBI or the CIA. You know, something normal, where you might end up drugged in an Avenger’s dumpster, but were extremely unlikely to end up thinking said Avenger was your guardian angel and subsequently starting to date him. 

Thing was, Phil’d never said he _wanted_ normal. He liked the variety and challenge of working with SHIELD. Besides, if dealing with occasional alien drug exposure or involuntary enchantment was the price for a life where he got to date Clint Barton, he felt it was a pretty good trade.

The dinner, though. Team Dinner. The Avengers Team Potluck. It was like the setup to an over-elaborate joke: eleven superheroes, one toddler, a SHIELD agent, a one-eyed dog, and Deadpool walk (or fly, or swing) into a loft in Bed-Stuy…

It wasn’t so bad at first. Several people arrived in fairly quick succession, keeping Phil too busy for nerves as he answered the door, kept Lucky from jumping on people, and showed people where to put their potluck contributions. In between, he watched Danielle Cage with the finely-honed paranoia of the childless bachelor, even though she had so far showed no interest in finding anything to fall off of, or onto, or put in her mouth inappropriately. In fact, she seemed to prefer to hang back behind her father’s legs, peeking around them with wide eyes and ducking back into shelter whenever someone looked at her.

Phil could sympathize. Unfortunately, Clint’s hover chair was too short to hide behind. 

He kept surreptitiously checking his list as people arrived; he didn’t expect everyone to be prompt—honestly, if nobody had to stop for a little light crime-fighting on the way, he’d be pleasantly surprised, given the way Clint’s life tended to go—but as the time got on and more people got there and Cap—Steve—hadn’t shown, he started to feel dread gnawing at his belly. Steve—Captain Rogers—had RSVPed before he’d helped bring Clint home. Before Phil had… had completely failed to recognize him, and practically ignored him, and tried to _tip_ him. Oh, he’d been nice about it—of _course_ he’d been nice about it, he was Captain America—but still. Small wonder if he never wanted to see Phil again, after all that. 

But even if that were the case, surely Captain America wouldn’t no-show on Clint. Granted, Phil knew that a man’s public persona didn’t necessarily indicate his character in private life, but he just couldn’t imagine it. Even if the Captain disapproved of Phil, he wouldn’t use the team dinner to show it.

Phil shot another worried look at the door, then went over to the corner where Clint was sitting in his StarkChair with an appetizer plate, holding half a chimichanga. Lucky was sitting next to him, his eyes following the chimichanga hopefully in case of falling snacks. Phil ruffled his ears; Lucky sighed and leaned into his leg a little, only looking over long enough to determine that he wasn’t carrying food before transferring his gaze back to Clint.

Well, to be fair, Clint did tend to gesture with his food. There was a precedent.

Clint looked up at Phil with a sunny grin. “Hey, you.” 

“How are you doing?” Phil asked, bending over to make sure Clint could hear him and giving in to the temptation to brush a lock of hair out of his eyes. “Do you need anything? Let me get you some more olives.”

Clint leaned in and smooched Phil’s cheek. “That’d be great, babe,” he said, smiling. Phil ruffled his hair fondly and took his plate, heading over to the giant platter Jan had brought to pick out the big green olives that Clint liked. While he fished in the olive bowl, he noticed Luke Cage lifting Danielle up, her curiosity apparently winning over her shyness. She stood on one of Luke’s massive shoulders as easily as if it were a sidewalk, one dimpled little hand clutching his head for balance while he steadied her. She waved across the room at Peter Parker; he was just coming through the door with his mask in one hand and a big bag of mostly-broken tortilla chips in the other, a jar of salsa webbed to the front of it.

At least up that high, Danielle couldn’t get into anything. Naturally, the moment Phil thought this was the moment that she let out a shriek that Phil _thought_ was expressing happiness, and shouted “Uncle Danny! Catch me, catch me!” 

While Phil was still looking around for Danny Rand, Danielle took a mighty leap off Luke’s shoulder—hitting him in the eye with one tiny hot pink combat boot—and hurled herself straight towards Clint.

There was a horrible frozen moment that felt like ten years, though it was probably less than a second, and then a room full of superheroes all moved at once.

They were too late.

Clint lunged forward in his chair with a pained grunt, arms darting out and chimichanga falling right into Lucky’s waiting jaws. He swept Danielle up just before she would have cracked her head on the arm of his chair, and Phil let out a sigh of relief. 

Danielle looked up at Clint, laughing, then went quiet, her face crumpling.

“You’re not Uncle Danny!” she wailed, and then even as Luke was reaching for her, she kicked hard, trying to get free of Clint’s hold. Phil heard a clunk and then a sick, agonized gasp as Danielle’s boot connected solidly with one of the external stabilizers on Clint’s leg. 

Clint let go of Danielle, curling in on himself, and she scrambled down out of his lap and ran over to her father, sobbing. Phil dropped what he was holding and ran to Clint, pushing his way through the knot of horrified dinner guests—he distantly noticed that Peter had tried to catch Danielle with a web, but Logan had gotten in its way in his own rush to catch her and was now stuck to the couch—to crouch next to Clint’s chair. Lucky, his muzzle smeared with sour cream, crowded in next to him, whining anxiously and looking at Phil as though waiting for him to fix whatever what wrong with his person.

Clint’s face was sickly white and tight with pain, his breath whistling through his clenched teeth. 

“Clint,” Phil said, brushing his hand over one of Clint’s fists. “Baby, can you say something? Did anything pull loose, do I need to call an ambulance?”

Clint grabbed Phil’s hand and clung, so tight it hurt. “No,” he gritted out. “I’ll be. Fine. Just. Shit. _Fuck_ , that hurts. Ow.” At their feet, Lucky whined anxiously.

Phil rubbed Clint’s arm with his other hand. The muscles were like stone beneath the skin. “I can call your doctor,” he offered. “Or Linda. Get them to check you over.” He was distantly aware of movement and conversation behind him, but that wasn’t important just then.

Clint opened his eyes, which were red and shiny with tears. “‘M okay,” he panted. “Just. Dammit. Even the kid. Thinks I’m fuckin’ Iron Fist.”

That startled a laugh out of Phil, and he leaned forward impulsively to kiss Clint’s temple. “I certainly _hope_ you aren’t fucking Iron Fist,” he teased softly, continuing the gentle (and, he hoped, distracting) movement of his hand on Clint’s arm. “I’d be pretty embarrassed to get thrown over for a white guy who talks that much about his chi, powers or no powers. We liaised with him on an undercover a few years ago, and I always felt like he was about to offer me some kind of aromatherapy seminar.”

Clint snorted, squeezing Phil’s hand again before relaxing his grip. “No worries, baby,” he said. “I’m a one-man archer. You got dibs. Also, I really wanna make a joke about your fists not being the part of you that’s made of iron, but. You know. Company.”

Phil chuckled, feeling a little swoop of triumph; Clint said Phil had _dibs_ on him. It wasn’t like they hadn’t already agreed their relationship was exclusive, just. It was nice to hear it affirmed. “We’ll take the joke as read. How’s the leg doing?”

“I think I’ll live,” Clint said. “It’s better, I don’t think she tore anything—that shit’s screwed in pretty good, you know, because they know me. Just gave me a hell of a kick.”

Phil looked him over carefully. He did look better, but there was still tightness in his posture, little flinches when he shifted in the chair. “Can you take another dose of your new meds?”

“Mm.” Clint closed his eyes. “Doc said four to six hours, and it’s been a little over four, so probably? I might get loopy, though.”

“Better that than in pain,” Phil said. “People will understand, you’re only three days out from surgery.”

“I’ll get it,” someone said, and Phil remembered with a start that a not-inconsiderable number of Avengers were currently in the room, watching him hover and flirt and… okay, Jasper, yes, make goo-goo eyes. He looked up and was relieved to see that the speaker was Wade; he’d come to feel a perverse sort of camaraderie for him during the potluck preparations that afternoon.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll go grab his ice pack. Take care of him, Luck.”

Lucky barked, tail wagging a little as he hooked his chin over the arm of Clint’s chair, nosing at him until Clint rested a shaky hand on his head.

Phil hurried into the kitchen. The apartment was getting somewhat chaotic; Luke was trying to apologize to Clint, Clint was trying to wave it off despite being in obvious pain, Jan was fluttering over Clint like a worried hen, and everyone else was either involved with or trying to avoid the potential fallout of Carol Danvers’ plan to unstick Logan from the couch by shooting an energy beam at the web. Phil briefly considered intervening—he had a horrible vision of the couch getting partially vaporized—but decided that it really wasn’t his place. He reached for the freezer door, distracted by trying to remember what he’d done with the cover for Clint’s ice pack. Had he put it with the dish towels or with the PT equipment?

The freezer wouldn’t open. 

Phil sighed. The gasket had something wrong with it, and it got stuck at least three times a week, but neither of them had found time to replace it yet. He braced his other hand against the fridge and yanked. The door resisted, then flew open with a slurping sound, slipping out of his hand and flying back. But instead of hitting the wall, it slammed into something and bounced back.

“Ow, shit,” someone said.

Phil froze in horror as the door swung back, as if in slow motion, to reveal Captain Rogers, still streaky-haired, holding a huge casserole dish in one hand and clutching his nose with the other. 

His nose. _Captain America’s nose._ That Phil had just slammed a freezer door into. A trickle of red dripped down onto Captain America’s upper lip as Phil stared.

Clint’s icepack, which was balanced precariously on top of a stack of frozen food, slithered out of the freezer and fell onto Phil’s feet with a sad thwump. This apparently triggered some sort of seismic event in the freezer; before Phil could pull his attention away from the shriek of _holy shit, did I break Captain America’s nose?_ in his mind, an avalanche began. Two ice cube trays, a bag of frozen kale, a half-empty box of ice cream sandwiches, a six-inch long knife, a set of keys on an Iron Man keychain, three Hungry Man dinners, a pair of jeans, and a magenta silicone dildo tumbled onto the floor.

The dildo bounced on the tile, rolled, and came to a wobbly stop right up against Captain America’s shoe.

Phil had once witnessed AIM deploying some sort of sonic weapon that cancelled out noise; the grenades would detonate into a wave of oppressive silence that spread out from the center. The silence that spread through Clint’s apartment was like that, only worse. 

Everyone close enough to see the dildo was staring at it, and everyone who wasn’t close enough was trying to see what everyone else was looking at. All other conversations died out as a room full of superheroes took in the tableau: Phil, hand still guiltily poised at freezer door height; Captain America, bleeding; and a hefty chunk of dick-shaped purple silicone that Phil had, until this moment, felt rather fond of.

“…I have a lot of questions,” Peter said.

“Don’t ask them,” Carol Danvers told him. “You’ll sleep better at night.”

Phil wondered if the squeezing in his chest was what a heart attack felt like. He didn’t know what to do, torn between competing impulses; should he try to help the Captain, or pick up the dildo, or… apologize? To everyone? Or possibly dash across the room, grab Clint, and make a break for the border to take up a new career as an Argentinian llama herder? Everything felt equally urgent, and his mind could do nothing but spin in horrified circles.

Natasha stepped out from behind Captain Rogers, pulled a set of tongs out of the utensil jar on the counter, and used it to pick up the dildo. She held it out to Phil, her face grave but with a suspicious twitch in the corners of her mouth. He took it, too numb to do anything else. 

It was very large. He’d known that, but it hadn’t seemed quite so… ostentatious… in a private setting.

He tried to put it in his pocket, it was too long; the last several inches stuck out the top. He looked despairingly at the molded balls and suction-cup base, bobbing a little at his hip; that was even _worse_. He took it back out, considered his options for a moment with the artificial calm borne of panic, then opened the drawer where Clint kept his takeout menus and pushed the dildo to the very back. He closed the drawer, and leaned against it for good measure, looking out into the room trying to seem dignified and unperturbed while simultaneously not meeting anyone’s eyes.

In the dead quiet of the room, someone whistled. “Damn, Clint,” Logan said, using a paper towel to wipe web remnants off the claws of one hand. “I knew you liked it big, bub, but I didn’t know you were that much of a size queen.”

“Didn’ use to be,” Clint said, his speech a little slow; the pill was hitting _fast_. “Just, you know. I started datin’ Phil, an’ after that I just didn’ wanna settle for less, you know?”

Phil felt himself blush so hard he felt a little dizzy as what seemed like everyone in the room turned at the same time to look in the direction of Phil’s hips.

Captain America looked away, his ears going red.

“Daddy,” Danielle piped up into the silence, “what’s a size queen?”

Someone gasped. Phil thought maybe it was Peter.

“I don’t know, sweetie,” Luke said in a strangled voice.

“It’s—” Wade began, when Phil cut him off, deploying his sharpest, most carrying tone, the one he used when ordering civilians out of a fire zone.

“It’s like the Snow Queen,” he said, channeling every bit of authority—and bullshit—he could muster. “Only instead of for snow, it’s for changing your size, like growing to be a giant or shrinking really tiny. You know how Jan is the Wasp, and she goes tiny?”

Danielle nodded.

“Clint used to do that too, only his name was Goliath, and he grew really tall.”

She looked considering. “But he’s a boy, though,” she said. “Queens are girls.”

He felt his face go somehow even hotter as someone snorted. “You’re right, Danielle,” he said. “Logan must have made a mistake.”

Her little face creased while she thought that over. “Logan’s silly,” she said at last.

“You’re absolutely right,” Phil told her, feeling almost faint with relief.

“Sweet Christmas,” Luke muttered, and Phil exchanged a speaking look with him; for a moment, they were united in mutual awareness of disaster narrowly averted.

“Why don’t I take Steve to get cleaned up while you handle things here?” Natasha said after a moment, and Phil nodded. He bent down to start shoving the pile back into the freezer, avoiding looking in the Captain’s direction; he couldn’t face seeing his, er, face, just at the moment. Once he reached the ice pack, he wrapped it in a dish towel and brought it back to Clint, trying not to make eye contact with anyone and attempting to erase all memories of the last five minutes by sheer force of will.

“Did I say somethin’ wrong?” Clint asked, his face crumpling as Phil arranged the ice pack around his leg. “Did—are you mad? I’m sorry.” 

Phil melted at the look of genuine worry on his face. “It’s okay, sweetheart, I’m not mad,” he said, smoothing his thumb along Clint’s worry lines. “Is the medicine helping?” 

Clint nodded, leaning into Phil’s hand. “Feels nice,” he sighed. Phil wasn’t sure if he meant the drugs or Phil’s hand, but he’d take it either way.

“Good,” he said. “I want you to feel nice.” 

Clint hummed a little in agreement. “C’n I have more olives?”

Phil chuckled despite himself. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll get you more olives.”

“Olive juice,” Clint murmured.

Phil smiled. Clint really was very cute when he was medicated, especially when Phil compared it to the sick tight suffering that had been on his face before. “Yeah, sweetheart,” he said indulgently, kissing the top of his head. When he turned around, everyone was very studiously looking elsewhere.

Phil decided to take it as a courtesy and not further proof that their guests were too aghast to look at him, and went back to the buffet table to get Clint a bowl of olives, making sure there was some brine in the bottom this time.

Maybe Clint just had a salt craving. Stranger things happened when one was healing.

The buzzer went off again. “Okay, I’m here, the party can begin,” Tony Stark said, his voice garbled by the cheap speaker. “Also, Barton, I am personally insulted that you still have a system this terrible. I’m upgrading this, no arguments.”

“No AIs, Tony,” Clint hollered across the room.

Phil went to the speaker and pressed the button to talk. “Clint says that’s fine, just please don’t make the system self-aware,” he said, buzzing Tony in.

“Agent Boyfriend! Good to hear your voice. I brought some sushi, hope you like sushi! See you in a minute.”

As if Tony’s voice had broken a spell, everyone went back to what they were doing, and Phil felt the lack of their attention like a blessing, even if he did keep getting a few sidelong glances. He looked over at the buffet table, which was a little full and also still had olives scattered over it. He went over and started tidying up and consolidating, trying to make some space. How big was a sushi platter? 

He’d just barely finished clearing about a third of the table when the door opened dramatically, revealing Stark, who was wearing most of a suit—Gucci, Phil thought, by the flamboyance of the cut—on top of a faded Black Sabbath t-shirt and a pair of scuffed Chucks that had little pictures of Iron Man printed on the sides.

“You never call, you never write, you only have me over for group events or to program your DVR,” he said, sweeping across the room. “I’m starting to take it personally, Barton.”

Clint grinned, reaching out to clasp his hand in greeting. “Hey, Tony. Thanks for the ride.”

A Japanese man in pristine chef’s whites appeared in the doorway, holding a giant cooler. “Excuse me,” he asked. “Where should I set up the food?”

Phil blinked, then gestured wordlessly at the hospital-bed-cum-buffet.

“Ah,” the man said, with the sort of polite non-expressiveness that could only be masking extreme disapproval. “Very well.”

“Please feel free to, er, rearrange things as needed,” Phil told him, receiving a nod in return.

As the first man approached the table, he was followed by a string of several more people, all in chef’s whites with a small, tasteful Japanese logo embroidered on the chest, all carrying coolers. They enveloped the buffet like a quiet and efficient whirlwind, and when the metaphorical dust settled, they had somehow taken over two-thirds of the table with an astoundingly beautiful display. Pristine sushi nestled on small trays tucked in beds of crushed ice, multiple layers of food studded with small dishes of wasabi and tiny crystal bottles of soy sauce. At the pinnacle was an honest-to-God ice sculpture, depicting a koi wreathed with chrysanthemums.

Rejuvenation, perseverance, and good luck. It was a lovely thought, really. Phil mentally added another point to his “Tony Stark: Secret Softie” tally.

“We all set up?” Tony looked up from where he’d been talking with Jan. “Great! Thanks so much, Yusuke. Here.” He pulled a thick roll of cash from his pocket and handed it over. “For all of you, thanks for making the trek out here, see you later!” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Great, I’m starving. Can I grab you something, Barton? Try the toro, it’s amazing.”

“Sure, Tony, you pick,” Clint said. “And also, somma Steve’s tater tot thing, kay?”

“You’re a Philistine,” Tony muttered, but Phil saw him carefully picking up a second plate and adding a generous scoop of—

“Did. Did Captain America bring _tater tot hotdish?”_ Phil asked nobody in particular.

“Sure did,” Clint said, grinning. ”Just like Granny used to make.”

“I thought his grandmother was Irish.”

“Didn’ say it was _his_ Granny. Apparently his upstairs neighbor retired here from Minnesota f’r some reason—grandkids or somethin—and she taught him how. He brings it every time, it’s great. Thanks, Tony.” Clint took the two plates from Tony, one in each hand, then looked down at them sadly. “Aw, hands.”

“There’s a—thing. Tray thing,” Tony said. “Third button on the right, here” He leaned over and did something to the arm of the chair, and a tray table unfolded from the arms and locked neatly into place.

“Awesome,” Clint said happily, setting his plates down. “Thanks!”

The Avengers grazed happily among the platters, heaping plates and finding places to sit. Phil hung back, trying to make sure everyone had what they needed while keeping a wistful, hungry eye on the sushi. Was that uni on the top tier? He hadn’t had good uni in forever.

“Hey,” Clint called. “Save somma the sea urchin for Phil, okay? That’s his favorite.” 

“It’s fine,” Phil said, as Jan moved her hand from the uni platter to the one of eel just below. “Please, get what you want.”

Jan rolled her eyes at him, then picked up one of the delicate porcelain sushi plates—Phil hoped that he wasn’t going to be responsible for packing them up to return to the restaurant—and put five pieces of uni on it, then held it out to him.

He hesitated for a moment, his sense of hostly duties—only exacerbated by the smell of hotdish wafting from the table like the ghost of his late grandmother—warring with his desire to eat what was quite likely several hundred dollars’ worth of his favorite sushi.

Tony Stark had bought it. That sea urchin was probably swimming in the ocean this morning.

He took the plate. Jan beamed at him and moved on to the fatty tuna. Phil moved over to Clint and set his plate on the edge of Clint’s tray.

“Do you need anything else?” he asked, checking to make sure Clint had napkins, utensils, a drink. 

“Get me a pop?” Clint asked. “And whatever else you want, then come siddown an’ eat.”

Phil investigated the cooler, which had developed an assortment of Ramune and some bottled green tea in addition to the soft drinks and beer it had held before. He grabbed a few, then took another spin through the buffet to get a small portion of each dish, as lingering grandmotherly guilt would dictate. He went over to where Clint was parked, telling some sort of story to Natasha, who had somehow gained control of Clint’s only armchair.

“Hi, Phil,” she said when he drew near. “Here, we saved you a seat.” She patted the arm of her chair.

“Thanks,” he said, meaning for before as well, and she grinned at him, dimples flashing. 

“Think nothing of it,” she said. “Oooh, is that Ramune?”

He offered her the bottles, and she picked one—lychee flavor—and popped the seal deftly. “Thanks,” she said. “Now eat that sushi before I try to steal a piece and Clint stabs me with a chopstick.” 

Clint handed the plate to Phil from where he’d been guarding it behind the barricade of one muscled arm. The sucker bruises were starting to fade from purple to green, most of the abrasions well on their way to healing. Phil smiled softly at him. “My hero,” he teased.

Clint ducked his head, the tips of his ears going pink. Phil held out the remaining drink bottles. “What flavor?” he asked.

Clint took the strawberry, and Phil settled on the chair arm with his own lemon-lime, clinking bottles with Clint when he held his up in a jaunty salute. He took a moment to appreciate his plate, taking in the vibrant color of the meat, the delicate briny scent. He lifted a piece, not bothering with soy or wasabi, nothing to interfere with the flavors of the uni, and placed it meat side down on his tongue.

His eyes slid shut with bliss as he chewed, the meat melting into creaminess, suffusing his palate with rich umami and the aroma of a gentle ocean breeze when the air is just freshened after a rain. Damn, that was good. Manners be damned, he might have to go back for more.

He heard Clint’s rusty chuckle and opened his eyes to see Clint grinning at him.

“What?” he asked, after he swallowed.

“An’ here I thought I was the only one who c’ld get you to make that face,” Clint said. “If we didn’ have company and I c’ld stand up, I’d wanna push you up against th’ wall and see who makes you more orgasmic, me or that sea urchin.”

“Maybe take a raincheck,” Phil said, nudging Clint’s uninjured foot with his toe. He ran his tongue around his teeth, savoring the traces of the first piece of sushi before going back for another.

“He _really_ likes that kind,” Clint told Natasha, with the air of sharing a secret. “Like, really. Phil, tell Nat what sea urchin tastes like.”

“It’s got a rich texture and a mild, briny flavor,” Phil said.

Clint sighed. “No. Phil. Tell her what y’told _me_.”

“Okay, now I’m curious,” Natasha said, raising one elegant brow. “I’d like to hear it.”

Phil cleared his throat, feeling a bit sheepish. “I’d like to start by pointing out that we’d had most of a bottle of sake on the occasion in question,” he said. 

“Noted,” Natasha said, her dimples flashing in a quirky little grin.

“It tastes like kissing the god of the sea,” Phil said, then mentally shrugged and decided to just push the rest of the way through. Natasha had seen the way he looked after sleeping in a hospital recliner, after all. If she wanted to judge him, she had plenty of material already. “It tastes like a walk on the beach when the sun’s just coming up and the tide’s on its way in. It tastes like standing on the prow of a ship, breathing clean air and salt spray while your hair blows around your face.”

Natasha blinked.

“Toldja,” Clint said, somehow managing to sound both stoned and smug.

“I really want to try some now,” Natasha admitted. “That was… unexpectedly poetic.”

“Well, you know. Sake,” Phil said.

“Can I have one?” Natasha asked.

Phil looked down at the four remaining pieces on his plate, reminded himself that Natasha was a guest in his hom—his temporary home, and held out the plate, trying not to look pained.

“Nat,” Clint said.

“Just kidding,” Natasha said. “I’ll go get my own.” She winked at them and got up, heading to the buffet.

“You’re cute,” Clint told him, patting Phil’s arm a bit off-center and leaving a few grains of sushi rice stuck to his sleeve. 

“You’re on drugs,” Phil reminded him, subtly picking the rice off and letting it fall to the floor. (He’d gotten a lot less particular about that kind of thing after seeing how constant and comprehensive Lucky’s crumb patrol was.)

“They don’ do anything to my _eyes_ ,” Clint said. He moved his hand to Phil’s leg, a gesture that would have seemed a lot more innocent if the tips of Clint’s fingers weren’t resting just below the faded traces of a set of his own teethmarks on Phil’s thigh. “I know cute when I see it.” 

Phil let out a long breath, feeling a knot at the base of his skull unwind. Things weren’t really going so terribly. Everyone was well-fed and nobody was yelling or committing crimes, so they were already well ahead of the majority of Avengers team events. And he still had four more pieces of uni to enjoy, and a tingly heat seeming to radiate across his body from where Clint’s hand was resting. Phil wasn’t exactly horny—even his rather robust libido had been somewhat dampened by the events of the week—but it felt caring and comfortable and safe and joyous, just feeling Clint touching him again; like the universe was telling him that everything was okay.

Phil was opening his mouth to say something sappy—maybe something about how Clint should know cute, seeing as how he looked in the mirror at himself every day—when someone cleared their throat nearby.

“Excuse me,” Captain America said. 

Phil froze, then forced himself to look around. The Captain’s nose looked okay, thank the super-soldier serum for small mercies, but his expression was suspiciously flat. 

Oh, _shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the thanks to Kathar for tremendous beta to this monster scene, which has Too Much Going On but I couldn't bear to take out any of the funny bits. You are a master. And thanks to all of you who come on these ridiculous journeys with me; you're amazing.
> 
> Edited to add, as requested, a list of why some of that stuff was in Clint's freezer.  
> 1) the jeans: Clint heard somewhere that you weren't supposed to wash your jeans, like it was bad for them somehow, and instead of washing them you could put them in the freezer. So one time he stuck a pair in there to try it out and then he had to go out on a mission or something and then they kind of migrated to the back and he forgot they were there and just figured those jeans must have gotten dissolved by a slime monster or something. That kind of thing happens to him a lot.  
> 2) the keys: okay so you've just bought groceries, right, and someone calls you while you're walking upstairs, so you have the phone between your shoulder and your ear and the bags in one hand and your keys in the other, then you're trying to put stuff away and your hands are both full but you NEED one of your hands to do the putting away so you just set your keys down somewhere and then you put something on top of them and then like two days later you have to get new keys because they've vanished off the face of the earth.  
> 3) the dildo: two words: sensation play.


	9. Team Dinner 2: Electric Boogaloo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain America has seen his dildo. Surely, the night can reach no new depths. Right?
> 
> ...right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your reaction to the previous chapter filled me with both glee and inspiration to finish the revisions on the second half of the Team Dinner chapter as soon as I could! Thanks so much for coming on this ride with me! And special thanks to Kathar for beta-ing my revisions yet again so I could make sure all the new bits still fit with the old ones.

“May I sit down for a moment?” the Captain asked, nodding a little stiffly at the seat Natasha had left.

“Please, take the chair,” Phil said, jerking to his feet like he was on wires. “And please, sir—Captain A— _Rogers_ , please accept my deepest apologies for the, er. Incident. Earlier. With your face. I mean, the door. I’m so sorry.”

“Captain a-Rogers,” Clint murmured in a comedy Italian accent, pinching his fingers into the air as though to praise a spicy meatball. “Heh.”

Phil was desperately in love with him, but for about three seconds he wanted to murder him where he sat.

Captain Rogers’ face pinched. “No, please don’t get up,” he said. “It’s fine, no harm done.” He waved vaguely nosewards. “I heal fast.”

Phil winced.

“I just wanted to thank you for hosting us tonight, despite everything that’s been going on,” the Captain continued. “We do appreciate it.”

“It was no trouble,” Phil lied. “We’ve been looking forward to this for a while; work just kept getting in the way. You know how it can be.” Wait, would that sound like he was comparing himself to an Avenger? Did that seem arrogant or overly-familiar? “But I’m very glad to meet you all,” he added hurriedly. He cast around for a topic of conversation that was neither another apology nor too try-hard, then his eyes fell on his Take A Little of Everything Or You’ll Hurt Someone’s Feelings, Phillip plate and he seized on what he hoped was a pleasant—or at least neutral—topic. “I understand you brought the hotdish? I can’t wait to try it.” He made himself set his sushi down on Clint’s tray and picked up the other plate.

Captain Rogers looked surprised. “Hey, you know what it’s called? Everyone else calls it a casserole.” 

Phil shrugged. “I grew up in the Midwest,” he said. “Wisconsin first, and then Chicago, but my grandmother was from Duluth.”

“My neighbor’s from Minnesota,” Captain Rogers said. “I’m afraid I’m a bit of a disaster in the kitchen; the first time we did one of these I tried to make something and ended up setting a pan on fire. Then I tried to put it out, only I forgot you don’t use water on grease fires, and… well. Things escalated.”

Clint snorted. “W’th you? I’m shocked, Steve. Shocked.” He grinned, kind of bleary at the edges but pleased with himself. 

Captain Rogers rolled his eyes at Clint, the corner of his mouth ticking up a little. “You blow up one measly tank, I swear,” he said, moving as though to poke Clint companionably in the shoulder before rather obviously remembering his convalescent state and converting the gesture into a sort of halfhearted wave. “Anyway, while we were waiting for the fire department to clear the building, Edie and I got to talking, and she offered to help me make something to bring. Foolproof, she said. Goes together easy and you can keep the ingredients on hand. She wrote all the steps down, then she let me watch her make one, then the next time she let me do one while she supervised… it was nice,” he said, his voice going wistful. “Growing up, I never knew my Gran, she was back in Ireland and you couldn’t just cross the ocean willy-nilly like you do these days. I enjoyed learning from her. And everyone seems to like it, so there you are.” 

“And they say there’s no community in the city,” Phil said, taking a big bite of the hotdish. It tasted like beef and salt and nostalgia, and for a second Phil could almost smell his Grandmother Coulson’s kitchen.

“Just like my grandmother used to make,” he told Captain Rogers, honestly.

“I’ll have to tell Edie, she’ll be tickled pink.” He smiled a little, but it faded fast, his jaw setting. Phil hadn’t done anything new in the last five minutes to piss him off—he didn’t think, anyway—so he was at something of a loss as to why.

“Who pissed in y’r Wheaties, Steve?” Clint asked. “You got that const’pated look. Hey Tony, you an’ Cap been fightin’ again? Y’know it stresses out the kids.”

Tony, who was sitting on the loft steps watching Danielle Cage with the wary fascination of a cat facing a silent vacuum cleaner, jerked his head around. “No! What? No! Steve, I was kidding.”

Captain Rogers blinked. “Kidding about what?”

Tony’s expression went furtive. “Nothing. Just. In general. Like, as a default setting. Anyway, what was Barton talking about?” 

If he’d been in a cartoon, Phil thought, a comically exaggerated sweatdrop would have appeared.

“Steve’s mad about somethin’,” Clint said.

Phil still wasn’t totally convinced the Captain’s mood was that mysterious; it seemed to him that “assaulted with freezer door and subsequently sex toys” was plenty enough reason for anyone to be miffed, polite denials notwithstanding.

“This isn’t the time or the place for that,” Captain Rogers said. He huffed, and something in the angle of his jaw and the way his nostrils flared reminded Phil, suddenly and irresistibly, of an affronted horse. 

Phil looked down at his plate, suddenly sure that the unflattering thought was clearly readable on his expression—or, hell, maybe just straight out of his brain? He spent a frantic moment mentally reviewing the attendees, only relaxing when he realized none of the telepaths who worked with the Avengers were there.

The telepaths that SHIELD knew of, at any rate.

“Now, now, Captain,” Tony said, recovering his aplomb. “I distinctly remember attending a seminar a few weeks ago about the importance of team communication and not repressing negative emotions.” He gestured expansively with a pair of red-and-gold chopsticks. (Where had those even come from? All the ones that came with the catering were black.) “Let it out, clear the air.”

The Captain stood up, his movements sharp, and took a few steps forward before having to pull up short to avoid Wade, who was crouched on top of one of Clint’s barstools with a chimichanga in each hand, watching the scene with an attentive-looking tilt to his head.

Captain Rogers looked at Wade for a moment, seemingly at a loss, then sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t need to let anything out, Tony. I’m not angry.”

“You look angry,” Jan piped up. “You’re doing that thing.” She turned to Logan. “You know, that thing he does?”

“Yup,” Logan said. “She’s right, bub. You’re not a good liar.” 

“Fine,” the Captain said, chin jutting stubbornly. “Fine, okay, I _am_ angry, but it’s not at any of you.” He glared at Logan for a second, then sighed again. “Ugh, I should have just stayed home tonight. I’m unfit for company.” 

A wash of relief hit Phil, so potent he almost toppled over. Maybe the Captain really _wasn’t_ upset about his nose. 

Please, let him really not be upset about his nose.

“I’m sorry,” Captain Rogers continued. “I didn’t mean to bring it to Team Dinner.” Phil could hear the capital letters in how he said it. “It’s not official business.”

“You can still tell us about it, Steve,” Jan said, coming over and laying her hand on his arm. Her head didn’t even come up to his shoulder. “We’re your friends, we want to help.”

He looked uneasily at Clint and Phil.

“Man, you know she’s right,” Clint said easily. “You’d do the same for any of us.”

Phil tried to radiate supportive acceptance without inserting himself into the conversation. He didn’t know what was bothering the Captain—it was honestly hard to imagine what possible issue _could_ be bothering him that much without being Avengers business—but his traitorous mind started spinning far-fetched scenarios that would end in Captain Rogers needing something that only Phil could provide, like… like…. The loan of a squad of half-trained SHIELD agents? Dogsitting services from an exotic dancer-cum-veterinary student? A copy of the recipe file his Grandmother Coulson had compiled for him, when he left home to go to Northwestern?

Enough, Phil thought, bringing his thoughts up sharply. Captain America had a non-Avenger problem, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t something the others could help him with; probably it was something that would require something to be invented, or bought, or researched, or even fashion-designed, and one of the others would help him, and that would be _fine._

“It’s the co-op board in my building,” Captain Rogers said.

Phil’s entire body snapped to attention. Wrangling a group of fractious civilians on a control trip? Using their own arcane bylaws against them? It was almost too good to be true; this could only be more in Phil’s wheelhouse if one of them suddenly turned violent in the middle of a committee meeting and had to be subdued with a bank pen on a chain and a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order.

Clint chuckled, raspy and delighted. “Well you came to the right place, buddy,” he said. “Cuttin’ through bur—burra—officey bullshit is one a’ Phil’s superpowers.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but I am the treasurer of my co-op board,” Phil said, leaning forward and trying to project competent assurance and not, say, puppylike eagerness. “Maybe I could offer some insight?”

“Hell, maybe you can,” Captain Rogers said, and Phil forced himself not to squeak with glee. The Captain stood up and dug in his pocket—Phil wondered if anyone had ever explained to him about the existence of athletic-cut jeans—and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper, which he handed to Phil.

Phil took it. It was on—God, parts of Brooklyn were getting insufferable—letterpress stationery. The letters were a tiny bit misaligned, probably on purpose to make it look vintage, and it had the name and address of a building in Crown Heights.

It started out “Greetings, neighbors!” and proceeded in a grating tone that somehow combined self-aware faux-collegiality and pretentiousness with bits of legal jargon that were being used just slightly wrong; the overall impression was that of a Christmas letter written by a sophomore pre-law major who’d dropped out of school to open a vegan bakery.

Then he registered the content of the letter, and felt his jaw go tight. “What _assholes_ ,” he said. “Let me guess, they buried the vote notification in the middle of the most obscure newsletter they could find and called it something as vague and bland as possible.”

Captain Rogers nodded, sweeping his hand through his mottled hair in an agitated gesture. “They did a bunch of bylaws revisions,” he said. “Half an hour shift in garbage collection times. Two-degree adjustment in the boiler temperature settings. A one-pound increase in the pet weight limit. Quiet hours starting fifteen minutes later. Raise some of the fines a percent or two, lower some others. And then, about two-thirds of the way through the list—” he gestured expansively, “—between a target date to have all the hall light bulbs replaced with LEDs and a change in what brand of toilet paper gets stocked in the common areas, they stuck that in. ‘Section 15-B Parameter Adjustment to Reduce Insurance Premiums.’” His voice had gotten louder and louder as he made his way through the list, and everyone else in the room had pretty much stopped their own conversations and were drawing closer.

“What?” Jan looked between them, a concerned frown creasing her face. “What’s that? What did they do?”

“Passed a mutant-exclusion clause in the co-op bylaws,” Phil said, scowling.

“Shit,” someone said from above Phil’s head. He looked up and saw Peter, stuck to the wall, eating from a plate that was balanced on top of the floor lamp. “Isn’t that illegal? Like, equal housing and stuff?” 

“It’s a gray area,” Carol Danvers said, voice clipped. She clenched her fist, and Phil saw traces of golden energy flickering over her knuckles. “They’re still hashing it out in the courts.”

“They’re trying to avoid the discrimination question by making it seem like a liability insurance issue,” Phil said. He could hear his own tone sharpening with disgust. “But that’s bullshit.” 

“Damn _right_ it is,” Captain Rogers said. He started pacing the limited space in the room. “I mean, sure, if you have an individual with, like,” he flung his hand out like Johnny Storm, “uncontrolled fire powers or something, that could be a problem for the building. But the answer is to get them _help_ , it’s not—”

“Systemic racism?” Luke suggested, his voice twisting a little.

Logan raised a beer in his direction from his reclaimed (and now de-webbed) spot on the sofa. “Preach it, Cage.”

“Exactly!” Captain Rogers spun on his heel, his gestures getting bigger and his voice louder. “It’s wrong, trying to turn on your neighbors because of the way they were born, when they’ve never done anything but help you!” He flung out one arm in emphasis, not even noticing Wade ducking out of its way as he spun around to address the room at large. “How many goddamn times do I have to die for this country for people to _get_ that?”

Phil’s stomach twisted with both anger and guilt—they should have done better, he thought. All the time Cap had been asleep, and he still had to come back to this? They should have made things _better_ by now. And even leaving aside the failings of modern American society, what kind of blithering idiots tried to pull this kind of shit after they’d already sold a unit in the building to _Captain America?_

“Aw, Cap,” Clint said, his voice gentle in the uneasy silence. “It’s y’r friend, right? Gramma Edie? What, they tryin’ to evict her?”

The Captain stopped pacing to stare at Clint, blinking. “How did you—”

Clint shrugged. “I mean, she’s th’only one a’ your neighbors you like,” he said.

“Hawkeye,” Captain Rogers huffed, shaking his head a little. Phil felt an entirely inappropriate little surge of pride; even drugged to his eyeballs, Clint saw so much, Clint was so kind, that it even impressed Captain America.

“Yeah,” the Captain said. “Yeah. I mean, I’d be pissed even if we didn’t have any mutants in the building right now, but… it’s Edie. She doesn’t even—it’s the most harmless thing.” His voice softened. “She’s just… really good at plants. Makes ‘em grow, all her windowsills just covered in herbs and flowers, and her patch in the roof garden’s the best by far, and. I guess… she doesn’t really hide it, but she doesn’t make it a big deal, either. I guess someone saw her one time on the roof, making something grow. They, ah, they get pretty competitive over those patches. There’s a contest or something, I dunno.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Every time I tried to plant something it seemed like I’d have to go out on a call and it would die, so I just let Edie use my patch, too. I, ah, I guess maybe the board didn’t like that much, either.”

“Oh my god,” Clint said. “I’m kinda glad my place is still pretty much a shithole. I got enough drama in my life.”

“It’s not a shithole,” Phil told him, feeling oddly stung. “It’s a great building. It’s got character. And the neighbors are great.” They were. Every single one of them had followed the instructions on the cheesecake handout. Phil’d had junior agents assigned to him who showed far less dependability and attention to detail.

Clint beamed at him. “Aw, they love you too,” he said, and Phil ducked his head, feeling far more pleased than the comment probably warranted.

“So what do you need, Cap?” Tony asked. “Intimidation? Press campaign? Name and shame? Maybe some attack lawyers? I got great attack lawyers.”

“That’s just _it_ ,” the Captain exclaimed, starting to pace again. “I was going to call Jen, see if we could get an injunction or something, but Edie doesn’t want me to make a _fuss_!” He spun around, barely missing the kitchen island with his elbow. “She’s just—she’s gonna just _let_ them!” He gestured wildly, frustration etched in every line. “ And they have no problem just walking all over a sweet old lady who never hurt any—” 

Phil saw it coming, a split second before it happened. An unusually sweeping arm gesture coincided exactly with one of the Captain’s sharp heel turns, and he carried his momentum as he set his foot down squarely on a stray olive that Phil hadn’t noticed had fallen on the floor. 

Phil opened his mouth on a warning, but there was no time. The Captain’s foot slid in the oily mess. He windmilled his arms, trying to recover his balance, but his normal agility was hampered; the space was tiny and full, crammed with furniture and people, an injured man and a baby; as Captain Rogers flailed, trying to avoid crushing anyone, he took a header right onto the end of the hospital bed buffet.

It was like an out of body experience, like watching a movie in slow motion; several hundred pounds of super-soldier hitting the end of the bed, the other end flipping up like a seesaw, pivoting on the castors. Lucky barking and people shouting in dismay, reaching out in futile efforts to stop the disaster. The contents of the buffet catapulting and/or sliding off in a shower of fish and ice and broken tortilla chips, and the board clonking Captain America on the head before slipping to the ground, coming to rest print-side up.

There was a moment of perfect stillness. Nobody who’d been participating in the conversation had escaped unscathed; Jan was wearing most of the crudité platter, Wade had a trail of hummus down his shoulder, Logan had shards of tortilla chip scattered through his hair like rice after a wedding. Phil himself had taken a bowlful of crushed ice to the midriff, and his lower half was now wet, chilly, and smelled faintly of fish.

“Um,” Peter said. He was, Phil noted distantly, clutching the koi ice sculpture, which was encrusted with web. “Is… is that the Virgin Mary?”

Phil looked down. WO, said the sign. Lucky emerged from behind Clint’s wheelchair, unscathed except for a gory-looking splash of salsa down his chest, and started licking up a trail of hotdish filling, pausing here and there to snarf up some tater tots or a stray piece of sushi.

At least _someone_ was having a good dinner party.

“Yeah,” Phil replied. He felt distant, almost numb, and he wondered why he wasn’t freaking out more. Was it possible to go into stress-induced adrenal failure in one afternoon? “It was a present.” He saw the platter the uni had been on. It was empty. “I. I should clean this up.” His voice wobbled a little and he cleared his throat harshly. “We can… order something. Pizza?” He looked helplessly at Clint—who was picking an olive out of his collar and eating it—and then, god help him, at Wade. 

"I am so sorry," Captain Rogers said. Phil wasn’t positive, but he was pretty sure the Captain was absolutely mortified.

A piece of salmon sashimi slid off Captain Rogers’ head and fell onto the floor with a sad plop. He picked it up and looked at his hand glumly. “I’ll get this cleaned up, Clint. Phil. I’m _so_ sorry.”

Phil opened his mouth to tell him that it was nothing, please not to worry, but he somehow couldn’t quite make the words emerge, not while looking at the mess of melting ice and scattered hotdish and expensive sushi that he had _really been looking forward to eating_ , dammit. He stood there for an endless moment, stalled out like a vapor-locked engine while the mood started tipping from “socially awkward” toward “socially catastrophic.”

“Don’ worry about it, Steve,” Clint said, coming to Phil’s rescue like the true hero he was. “I’ve done worse. You shoulda seen the place after the Battle of Bed-Stuy.” He waved an airy hand at the mess. “Least none’a this is blood.”

“Go get cleaned up, guys,” Bruce Banner said from the far corner of the kitchen, and Phil spared a brief prayer of gratitude to the universe and/or whatever deity looked after SHIELD agents that apparently he was more amused than angry. Of course, he’d been out of the range of most of the buffet. “We’ll handle things out here.” 

“There are clean towels in the bathroom,” Phil said. He offered Captain Rogers a hand up; Captain Rogers looked down at his handful of salmon, then at his other hand, which seemed to have landed in the hotdish. He was blushing bright, painful-looking red; Phil didn’t know if he was relieved to not be alone in his humiliation or horrified to have put a guest— _Captain America_ —in such a situation.

Phil took the salmon and dropped it on one of the spilled trays, then grasped the Captain’s slimy hand and hauled him to his feet, steadying him as he got stabilized through the mess and glad for SHIELD survival training; keeping one’s footing in the midst of a spilled buffet wasn’t exactly like dealing with either ice or swamp mud, but it wasn’t exactly _un_ like them, either. 

Once Captain Rogers was in the bathroom (for the second time in an hour, oh god), and everyone who had been in the splash zone was either crowding in around him or lined up waiting their turn, Phil looked around the room and took a deep breath.

“Right,” he said. “Okay.” His voice came out a little croaky, so he cleared his throat before continuing. This was fine. He could handle it. One step at a time, Coulson. “Dr. Banner, there’s a mop bucket and some garbage bags under the sink behind you; could you get them out, please?” He looked around the room at the unscathed Avengers, calling upon his if-someone-doesn’t-volunteer-I’ll-start-making-assignments expression. “We’ll need someone to sort out the unbroken dishes and set them aside to be washed and returned to their owners, and a few others to pick up as much of the food as possible, then we can mop up the rest. There are take-out menus in the—” he remembered what he’d just hidden in the take-out menu drawer and stopped himself, then cleared his throat again to cover the reflexive gasp of horror that had almost escaped him. “That is, Clint, do you have a suggestion for somewhere nearby that can get us a lot of food relatively fast?”

“Let me handle that,” Tony said, picking his way across the floor to Clint’s chair.

“All right,” Phil agreed. Neither his nor Clint’s bank accounts were exactly ready to accommodate superhero-buffet quantities of emergency takeout, and he was just as glad to not have to risk re-opening the menu drawer; with the way things had been going so far, the dildo would probably spring out of the drawer like a jack-in-the-box, ricochet around the apartment, and somehow re-injure Captain Rogers, and Phil really would have to move to the farthest reaches of the Andes or something to escape the humiliation. 

“Well, you heard the man, people,” Carol Danvers said. “Avengers assemble, let’s get poor Clint’s living room fixed up.”

They started moving, then, working together really quite admirably, forming something like a bucket brigade, except for garbage bags and paper towels and Lysol rather than firefighting; Phil felt himself starting to relax just a little as the heaps of goop were scraped up, the dishes—almost all, miraculously, unshattered—collected, and the smell of lemon floor cleaner began to cut through the smell of mingled raw fish and palak paneer. Wade was keeping an eye on Danielle and Lucky, who had been corralled into the cleanest corner; Lucky, sated on hotdish and rainbow roll, was drowsing in his basket, tail thumping erratically while Danielle carefully stroked his side. Luke and Carol were lifting pieces of furniture off the floor so that the goop and mop brigades could clean the floor beneath them, while Peter was climbing the walls in order to scrub away spatters of food. Phil glanced over to check on Clint, who looked to be deep in conversation with Tony but otherwise fine.

It would be all right. They’d pull this off. Tony’s credit line and Clint’s established habit of generous tipping (not to mention occasionally taking care of mobster problems for local small business owners) would get them a replacement dinner quickly, and everything would be fine. The Avengers almost had to have a sense of humor about these things, right? And besides, it was Captain America who had knocked over the table. 

“Wait, no, don’t push—” Tony said, sharply. Before Phil was done whirling around in a panic, a cloud of thick purple smoke filled his vision. He thought he heard Clint say “aw, chair,” but he couldn’t sure over the coughing.

And then the smoke alarm. _Shit,_ shit shit shit what was happening _now?_

Gasping for air, Phil blindly made his way to the windows and threw them open, then scrambled up the loft steps to open the upstairs windows as well. He leaned as much of his torso as could safely go out the window, taking deep breaths of clean—well, non-smoky—air, then pulled out his phone and entered the code to shut down the smoke alarm; the last thing they needed now was the fire department getting called out.

For a few seconds, he let himself consider just…. climbing the rest of the way out the window and fleeing and pretending none of it had ever happened the next time he met the Avengers. Maybe he could claim he’d been replaced by a Skrull? So tragic, a horrible ordeal—fortunately it’s the real me now! What a relief! I hope he didn’t too anything untoward during the impersonation, if Clint hadn’t been medicated he’d have twigged to it immediately…

Downstairs, over the din of coughing and exclamations, he heard Clint calling his name, tremulous and worried, and Phil gave up on escape fantasies; Clint needed him. He pulled his head back inside, pulled the collar of his shirt over his nose and mouth to form a makeshift mask, and went downstairs.

Wade had picked up the Virgin Mary sign and was using it to fan the smoke toward the windows.

“Good thinking, Wade,” Phil told him. Wade’s mask moved in a smile-shaped way. 

“I gotcha, buddy,” he said. Honestly, Phil thought Deadpool’s dossier needed updating; Wade was good people. Strange, sure, but he came through for you in a pinch.

Phil looked around; the air was clearing, though the smoke seemed to have left a glittery purple residue on… everything. Clint caught his eye, then looked down at his tray table, droopy and shamefaced under the lavender sparkles. He didn’t seem hurt; if anything, his body language reminded Phil of Lucky after a scolding.

"I'm sorry, Phil,’’ he said.

"It was my fault,’’ Tony said, tilting his chin up stubbornly. “I’m the one who—”

“Naw, Tony, you were jus’ showin’ me, I shouldn’t’a pushed the button,” Clint insisted. 

Phil laid a comforting hand on Clint’s shoulder, and Clint stopped and looked up at him, wide-eyed, biting his lip anxiously.

There came a point in certain missions, Phil had learned over the years, when an agent simply had to accept that things were totally and irretrievably FUBAR and just do his best to see it through. Obviously, Phil was doomed to only ever make terrible, humiliating first impressions on Avengers; he might as well stop trying to fight it, focus on getting everyone through, and let the chips fall where they may.

Anyway, the important thing was to get the hangdog expression off Clint’s face.

"Smokescreen in the chair?” he asked gently.

Clint nodded, looking down at his hands.

"Cool,’’ Phil said.

Clint and Tony both looked at him, matching expressions of surprise on their faces.

"Do we need to do anything special to clean up the… residue?’’ Phil asked.

"White vinegar," Tony said, looking at Phil suspiciously. “Or, you know, whatever works. It’s non-toxic and it won’t stain. Well. It won’t stain anything I’ve tested.”

Phil nodded. _You don’t have to worry, Tony,_ he thought. _I’m not going to hurt him if I can help it._ “Good to know.” He took a long, steadying breath. “Please excuse me for a moment,” he said, and bent to give Clint a short, reassuring, slightly grape-flavored kiss before he stepped out into the hall—everyone in the apartment was talking at once—and called Jasper.

Jasper answered the phone with, “What happened now,” which, to be fair, was an appropriate question.

“I’ll fill you in next time I’m drunk,” Phil told him, taking advantage of his momentary privacy to slump against the wall. “Any chance I can get your squad back?”

“You’re in luck,” Jasper said. “I had a suspicion you might need them again. We’re on standby at Waffles & Falafels.”

“Oh, thank god,” Phil said. “Okay. I need the squad, a couple big tubs of baby wipes, and…” he made some mental calculations, “five gallons of white vinegar. And a couple buckets and some sponges.” 

Jasper was quiet for a moment. In the background, Phil could hear someone shouting something about falafels.

“Okay,” Jasper said, “A, I want permission to photograph. B, you and I are going out drinking within the next seven days and you will tell me everything.”

“Deal,” Phil said. “We need the wipes first, if you can manage it.” 

“Ten minutes,” Jasper said, and hung up on him.

He was a really good friend.

Phil gave himself two more minutes to lean against the door, shut his eyes, and do the stress-reduction breathing exercise he’d learned at the SHIELD Employee Wellness Committee Lunch and Learn. He wasn’t sure it worked, but it at least made him feel like he was doing something productive. Then he braced himself and went back inside. The air had cleared, which was good, except for how it made it even more obvious that every surface in the apartment was now covered with a glimmering purple film. Someone had pulled what looked like all the clean towels and washcloths out of the linen closet and run the sink full of soapy water, and the various Avengers were scrubbing at themselves, with mixed results. 

Phil went over to Clint, whose face was mostly clean beneath the lilac spikes of his hair; the overlay of purple stuff on top of aging bruises made his arms look oddly mottled, like he was some kind of purple leopard-man.

Phil immediately resolved to never speak that thought aloud.

“How are you doing, babe?” he asked.

Clint beamed at him, good spirits restored. “You look really good in that color,” he said. “It brings out your eyes.” 

“Thank you,” Phil said. It was completely impossible not to smile back at him, so Phil didn’t even try. “Maybe I’ll get a shirt this color, later.” 

“That would be awesome,” Clint said. “C’mere.” He made grabby hands toward Phil, so Phil moved up alongside his chair so Clint could sling an arm around Phil’s hips and lean his head into Phil’s side. 

Phil ran a hand through his hair, releasing a tiny cloud of glitter. “How’s the leg?” he asked.

“It’s fine, Phil, you worry too much,” Clint said. “Also, I had my pills. I’m fiiiiiiine.” He giggled. 

Phil gave his shoulders a gentle squeeze. “Maybe we’ll wait for six hours, next time,” he said. “As long as you haven’t gotten mule-kicked by a baby.”

“Hey, that baby had _boots_ ,” Clint said. “Plus, like. Superhero baby. She’s a kicker.” 

“I’m sure she’ll do well in the family business, if she chooses to take it up,” Phil agreed. “Jasper’s squad is coming by with some vinegar to help clean the apartment. Once we get here, how about we get whatever takeout we manage and go up on the roof? I set some heaters up this afternoon in case we wanted to go outside.” 

“That’d be nice,” Clint said, muffled a little by Phil’s shirt. Phil cupped a hand protectively over the ball of his shoulder, giving in to the desire to cuddle him a little. He might not seem to care just then, but it _was_ his apartment currently covered in glitter. Only natural if he needed a little reassurance.

“Good,” Phil said. “Then that’s what we’ll plan on.” 

Just then, the buzzer sounded, and Carol answered it. “That’ll be Jasper’’s people,” Phil said, pulling away reluctantly.

Clint sighed. The side of his face was purple-streaked again where he’d been pressed against Phil. “Yeah, get ‘em,” he said. “I’ll be here.” 

Phil kissed his temple and went to get the door; it was Agent Hollingsworth, holding a large canvas shopping bag full of baby wipe cartons.

“Agent Sitwell sent me ahead, sir,” she said, looking around with wide eyes, but not asking; he was pleased with her sense of priorities. “The rest of them should be here soon.”

“Good work, Agent,” Phil said. He took the bag, dug out a few cartons, then handed the bag back to her. “You start in the kitchen, I’ll start by the window,” he said. “Help them open the containers since your hands are clean.” 

“Yes, sir,” she said.

Phil raised his voice. “This is Agent Hollingsworth of SHIELD,” he said. “She and I will be coming around with some wipes to help you clean up. Dr. Banner, are there any more garbage bags? Thank you. Some additional agents will be here shortly with some additional cleaning supplies, so whoever is by the door, please buzz them in when they arrive. Thank you.” He tore a bunch of bags off the roll and handed half to Hollingsworth, taking the other half over to the window. He spared a moment of grief as he cleared his plate of purple-coated uni off Clint’s tray—Clint, bless him, had been trying to save it for him—and set his stack of baby wipes down in their place. As he got each carton open and the wipes fed through the opening—fiddly work, honestly, that was really poor design; how could a parent with a crying, messy baby manage that one-handed while keeping the child from rolling off the table or something?—he handed them out, along with an accompanying garbage bag. One for Luke and Danielle, one for Wade and Peter Parker to share, one for Logan, one for Clint. They’d deal with Lucky later; honestly, purple glitter was the least of the unfortunate things he’d eaten that night, and if Tony said it was non-toxic, Phil believed him.

“Here, look up,” he told Clint, and pulled out a wipe and started cleaning the residual streaks off Clint’s face and neck. He was happy to see that his hunch had been correct, and whatever chemical magic was appropriate for baby shit also worked on StarkTech smokescreen residue.

Clint watched him quietly as he worked, fond amusement in the tilt of his lips and the crinkles in the corners of his eyes. Phil’s chest throbbed; everything all week had been topsy-turvy, Clint getting hurt and Clint’s rehab and the ridiculous scramble for team dinner, but it didn’t matter; Phil was _happy,_ he was so stupidly happy. This was his life now, super babies and purple smoke and the Virgin Mary sign and all. This was his life with Clint, and he was starting to let himself believe he was going to be able to keep it.

“You’re too good t’me, baby,” Clint said, turning his head to kiss Phil’s wrist. 

“No such thing,” Phil told him. 

Clint chuckled, a tiny, raspy thing that sent a shiver up the back of Phil’s neck. “Case in point.” He pulled a wipe out of the carton and started wiping down the tray table, then the chair’s handles and controls, then his own hands. As Phil was finishing the back of Clint’s neck, the front door opened and Jasper came in, his eyes widening as he took in the scene.

“Be right back,” Phil told Clint, and went to greet Jasper.

“Holy shit, Phil,” Jasper hissed, as soon as he was close enough.

“Believe me, I know,” Phil said, sighing.

Jasper shook his head. “Only you, I swear.” He held up his phone and snapped a picture. “There are so many things I want to say right now.”

“But you aren’t, because you’re my friend and you won’t kick me when I’m down?”

“More that I can’t decide what joke to make first,” Jasper said. “Are you aware that your face is purple?”

Phil gave him a look.

“Fine, just checking.” He took another picture, then looked around. “I’m guessing the vinegar is for the apartment?”

“Yeah,” Phil said. “The residue is non-toxic, reportedly, but I’d try to avoid too much exposure just to be on the safe side. If your team can work on the apartment, I’ll get the Avengers out of the way once they’ve finished cleaning up.”

It was strangely like corralling civilians on an op, for all that the Avengers were anything but; he and Jasper fell into long-familiar roles, and before long Phil was trailing close behind Clint’s hover-chair as they herded the last of the guests onto the roof. Everyone was still a bit purple, but they were taking it well; Phil supposed that their lives had enough bizarreness that they were well able to adapt to circumstance, especially if nobody was in mortal peril.

Except Phil, or at least his dignity, but he’d mostly passed through that and into a strange calm.

Phil and Wade had dragged an assortment of lawn chairs up to the roof earlier; now, with a few portable heaters going and battery-powered lanterns scattered around, it was quite cozy. Someone had rescued the cooler from Clint’s apartment, even; it was almost as though they’d meant to end up on the roof. The power of Tony Stark’s black AmEx had made the pizzas appear in record time, and Jan, the ends of her hair glimmering in the lantern light, was pointing people to seats and handing slices around.

Clint parked his chair next to one of the least rickety lawn chairs and tugged Phil over to sit in it. 

Phil eased into the webbed seat. Judging by the color scheme, it had to be at least twenty years old, but it took his weight with a minimum of creaks. 

Jan appeared at their elbow as if by magic. “What kind of pizza do you want?” she asked. “We have… well, pretty much all the kinds, because Tony.”

“I can—” Phil started to say, moving to stand up and resume host duties, but she stopped him with an outstretched hand.

“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “You’ve done enough, Phil. Give yourself a minute to breathe and let me make up my guilt for bringing this pack of wild dogs into your home and causing all this chaos.” 

“We invited you,” Clint said, while Phil’s mind was still a little locked up at the way Jan had called Clint’s apartment his _home_ , and Clint hadn’t corrected her. “Really, it’s on me if it’s on anyone, it was my big idea to have you all over.” He looked a little shamefaced. “I probably should have thought it through a little more, I’m not really set up for groups this big.”

It was absolutely true—the events of the evening confirmed it even if logic hadn’t already done so—but the droop in Clint’s shoulders felt completely intolerable.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Phil said. “Everyone seems to be having a nice time, right, Jan?”

Jan shot him an amused look. “Of course we are,” she said. “This is way better than that time we did a combined dinner with the Fantastic Four.”

Clint winced. “Man, I couldn’t eat barbecue for weeks after that,” he said.

“See, exactly,” Jan said triumphantly, winking at Phil. “So, what kind of pizza?”

Clint took pepperoni, and Phil took supreme, under the theory that he would at least be consuming a vegetable that way and could probably use the nutrients. Peter came by a minute later to ask what they wanted to drink, and soon everyone was comfortably settled and eating. 

Clint, despite having clearly asked Peter for a Dr. Pepper, had a craft beer sitting on his tray, dewed with moisture. Phil considered taking it away from him on the grounds of painkillers, but stopped himself; Clint was a grown man with significant experience healing from injuries and who, Phil knew, was actually pretty conscientious about following doctor’s orders, since it was a lot easier for him to end up permanently on the DL than his powered colleagues. As bad as the last week had been for Phil, Clint was the one who was actually suffering; if he judged it appropriate to have a beer, Phil wasn’t going to second-guess.

He’d keep an eye and make sure Clint didn’t forget and have another one, though. That was just being a good partner.

“You doing okay?” Phil asked him quietly.

Clint sighed. “I’m sorry I fucked everything up,” he said. “You had everything so nice even though you had, like, zero warning—sorry about that, too, it’s been brought to my attention that wasn’t cool of me—and then I had to go and…” he waved his hand around in a waggly gesture that Phil interpreted as “detonated a purple glittery smoke bomb all over the dinner party.”

“You didn’t fuck anything up,” Phil said. “That was all just—coincidences. Bad luck. I mean, unless you’re going to tell me you’re really Black Cat in disguise. Which would honestly be really impressive, considering.”

Someone laughed and tried to turn it into a really bad fake cough; Phil glanced around and realized that everyone had stopped talking and was very studiously chewing while very obviously not looking at them and pretending, very badly, not to be listening.

Seriously, how had some of these people maintained secret identities for years?

Clint sighed, toying with his beer bottle; he must have obtained it earlier than Phil had thought, because it was half gone already and Phil hadn’t noticed him taking more than a few sips. “I just… why aren’t you mad?” he said, his eyes never meeting Phil’s. “Everyone else—anyone would be mad. I don’t mean to be a screwup, but it always happens anyway and the people I—I care about, get caught in the blast zone.”

Phil bit back the highly uncomplimentary things he wanted to say about the taste level and relationship skills of Clint’s exes; it wouldn’t do any good even if they weren’t surrounded by people who were friends with most of them. He set his plate on the roof and got up, then crouched down in front of Clint’s chair, putting himself in Clint’s eyeline and waiting. Clint looked up from his hands, biting his barely-healed lip again.

“Clint,” Phil said, making himself ignore their audience and his own reluctance to put his emotions on display; this was important, Clint needed to hear it and Phil… well, Phil probably needed to say it even more. Jasper was right, you didn’t get a payoff without taking some risks. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

Clint gestured at his bad leg with a speaking look.

“You know what I mean,” Phil said. “There’s nothing wrong with you, as a person. With who you _are_.” 

“A hot mess?” Clint said, his mouth twisting. “No, wait, you’d be nicer than that. A lovable disaster, I’ve heard that one too.”

“Whoever said that was wrong,” Phil said firmly. “You aren’t a mess or a disaster. You’ve had a lot of shit happen to you, but I think that’s more an occupational hazard than anything. You are generous and kind and loyal and brave. Did you forget how we met? You would have been completely in the right to drop me off at the nearest NYPD precinct and wash your hands of the whole thing, but you didn’t. You took me in, and you helped me, and you let me drag you around half the borough and embarrass you in front of a stripper and a priest on the _same day_ —” 

“Wow,” Tony said, and was promptly shushed by about six people. Phil didn’t look over, his attention fixed on Clint’s wide eyes.

“Anyway,” Phil said. “The point is. How could I be angry about the way you are, when the way you are is the entire reason I want to be with you in the first place? If I wanted to date someone different, I would. You know how I—I’ve always admired you, even before we met.”

“Yeah, but—you didn’t know me, then,” Clint said. “You didn’t live—you hadn’t stayed with me. I know I’ve got curb appeal, but some days I’m barely holding it together, and even when I try it just… things go wrong.”

“And then you pick yourself up and keep going,” Phil said. “Do you have any idea how admirable that is? Clint, you found me in your _dumpster_ and you gave me the benefit of the doubt. You have enough heart for the whole of Brooklyn; how could that be anything other than a plus?”

“I—really?” Clint said, his voice gone soft. “You really feel that way?”

“Absolutely,” Phil said, putting every bit of conviction he could muster in his voice. He put his hand on Clint’s tray, palm up, and Clint took it, squeezing hard. 

“You’re probably gonna regret this,” he said, his grip tightening.

“I’ll take my chances,” Phil told him, leaning in for a soft kiss. “With you on my side, I think the odds are good.”

There was a moment of silence as the two of them looked at each other, like they were alone in the world.

“I have to ask,” Tony said. “Why were you in Clint’s dumpster?”

Phil sighed, the tension running out of him like water as he stood. “AIM drugged me during an undercover,” he said. “I wound up amnesiac and high as a kite, wandering all over Brooklyn. Fortunately, when I finally passed out, he was the one who found me.”

“I feel like there’s a lot more to this story,” Jan said. “Clint never even said, he always said it was on a mission so it was classified.” 

“Oh, man,” Clint said. “Guys, he was such a badass, you don’t even know. He didn’t even know his name, but he remembered how to investigate stuff and question witnesses. He traced back over his steps and figured everything out, and he was super hot and smart but also really sweet and a little dorky, and I was already falling pretty hard for him, right, but I couldn’t say anything because he had _amnesia_ , it would’ve been creepy.” He was talking faster and faster, his hands flying and his words tumbling over themselves in his enthusiasm to tell the story. “And then he got his memory back and it turns out he was all that and also, like, this James Bond SHIELD guy, only not sexist and also into dudes? And, and he came to the hospital and stayed all week, and he’s rearranged his whole schedule to take care of me while my leg’s busted, and he was so nervous about meeting you guys, like, he worked so hard on everything, he spent all last weekend baking and masturbating cherries—”

“Macerating,” Phil interjected, his face gone hot. “He means macerating, I was soaking them in amaretto.” 

Clint waved him off. “Yeah, that. Like, I didn’t ask him to do all that, he just did it, you know? Because he’s like that, he just _does_ things, way more than he has to, an’ he doesn’t even think twice about it. I think that was one of the things that first made me fall in love with him. I mean. Shit.” His mouth fell open, dismay written over his face. “Um.” 

Phil had frozen, his drink halfway to his mouth. Did Clint just—had he—

“I’m sorry,” Clint said urgently. “Phil, I’m sorry, I’m not supposed to say that yet, it’s too soon so I’ll look desperate and needy. I’m not desperate and needy, okay? I promise. I’m not gonna get all clingy and weird, I just, I really want you to love me back. But don’t freak out, I mean, when it’s time, okay? When you’re ready. _If_. If you’re ready to. Someday. Sorry. God, I shouldn’t have had that beer, it makes me, ah. Yeah.” He wrung his hands, and he might as well have wrung Phil’s heart at the same time, the way Phil’s chest ached.

“Clint,” Phil said. “Hey. Stop.” 

Everyone was quiet. It felt like all of Brooklyn was quiet, as Phil took a long, steadying breath, waiting for the panic to hit and then feeling the realization that it wouldn’t, a warm, buoyant certainty filling his chest instead.

“I love you back already,” Phil said. “Of course I do, I _have._ I just—” he broke off, chuckling a little at his own foolishness. “I didn’t want to say it too soon so I wouldn’t look desperate and needy.” 

“Dear god, _finally,_ ” someone said from behind them, and Phil looked over his shoulder to see Jasper standing in the doorway to the roof, holding a cheesecake. “Man, Barton, you should have seen this guy pine after you in Mogadishu, I thought I was gonna have to throw him out the hotel window. Anyway, good news, Phil, nobody had unwrapped your cheesecake stuff, so once we took the foil off, everything was fine underneath.”

If this had been a movie, Phil thought, or an episode of television, that would have been the end of it; a cheesecake montage, maybe, or freeze-frame on him and Clint kissing, roll credits. In real life, though, they had to find places to put the cheesecakes, and seats for the junior agents who, Phil and Jasper both thought, had earned some cheesecake after their long and confusing day of mysterious training exercises. They had to find plates and forks that hadn’t been turned purple, and hand them out, and Phil had to explain approximately twenty times what maceration was. (Four of the times were to Wade, who seemed strangely disappointed that Phil hadn’t actually been molesting fruit.) There were consolations, though, in the shape of Clint’s shy, happy face and the general sense of approval emanating from the Avengers; plus, well, Phil’s lingering insecurities settled down nicely when he reminded himself that he and Clint had made their romantic declarations in front of Captain America. That probably counted as a civil union in some states.

They got through all the pizza and doled out all the cheesecakes; the addition of the junior agents was fortunately covered by Phil’s nervous over-estimation of the amount of dessert everyone would need. Phil settled down next to Clint with his own slice, trying not to look like a nervous _Top Chef_ contestant waiting while the judges chewed. Fortunately, nobody present was trying to draw things out for dramatic tension.

“Oh my god,” Jan said, as soon as she’d swallowed her first bite. “Phil. This is amazing.”

Wade, who had pulled his hood up far enough to free his mouth, turned toward them. “Clint, my friend,” he said, somewhat indistinctly through a mouthful. “My buddy. Bro of my heart. I sincerely hope this never happens, but can I have your boyfriend if you die?”

“Only if you let me possess you like in _Ghost_ ,” Clint said. 

Wade nodded, shoving in another bite. “I can do that,” he said, spraying crumbs. “I do a mean Whoopi.” 

That seemed to break the ice, and Phil felt his face get hotter and hotter as various Avengers took turns praising the cheesecakes and/or subtly competing with each other for extra slices. Clint alternated between encouraging them to try different combinations of toppings and grinning proudly at Phil. Eventually, everyone ran out of cheesecake comments and relaxed into small talk—or at least what passed for small talk in a group composed of superheroes and SHIELD agents, which contained a lot more aliens and mad science than usual.

Once all the food was long gone and Danielle Cage was fast asleep on her father’s shoulder, the guests started drifting away, stopping by to offer what Phil thought were actually genuine thanks for hosting. Phil was starting to come to the end of his reserves, and wanted nothing more than to go back downstairs, put Clint to bed, and sit in silence while not trying to impress anyone. 

“Thanks so much for hosting, Clint, Phil,” Captain Rogers said, and Phil pulled himself back to attention.

“Thank you for coming, Captain,” Phil said. “Again, my apologies for the… everything. Before.”

“I told you, call me Steve,” Cap— _Steve_ —said. “Please don’t worry about any of that, I’ve had much worse.” 

“I appreciate it,” Phil said, not sure if it made him feel better to know that he wasn’t as bad as World War Two.

“Listen, fellas,” Steve said. “I just wanted to say, I’m real happy for you both. I can tell you’re good for each other, and Phil? It’s good to see the sparkle back in Clint’s eyes. I think a lot of that’s down to you.” 

“Yeah,” Clint said, looking over at Phil with a sweet smile. “I take back everything I ever said about my shit luck.” 

Steve chuckled. “Well, I’d better head home,” he said. “Phil, if you don’t mind, I’ll email you about the co-op board, maybe pick your brain a little?” 

“I—of course,” Phil said. “Anything I can do to help, Ca—Steve.” 

“See you next month,” Steve said, clapping him companionably on the shoulder and only knocking him sideways an inch or so. 

Freeze frame, Phil thought. Roll credits, end the episode on a high note.

Well. Maybe there was room for a _little_ bit of kissing montage before bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One little chapter and an epilogue! We're nearly home!
> 
> ...okay maybe I might do some in-universe time stamps later, I keep having ideas. But THIS story just has two more short chapters to go!


	10. The Rewards of the Just

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night draws to a close.

After the last straggling guests had left, Jasper and his team had sent Phil and Clint back downstairs while they cleaned up the roof. Jasper was a true friend, Phil thought, and he privately resolved that he was going to foot the entire bill for their promised drinking excursion later. 

As Clint’s pill started wearing down, exhaustion had hit him hard, and Phil was little better. Clint, nearly falling asleep in his chair by the time they got off the roof, had turned on the hover and was letting Phil steer him down the hall. Phil only hoped that the team had been able to clear enough space that he’d be able to get Clint in bed before he finished up for the night. 

Phil opened the door with some trepidation, and blinked in surprise as he looked around. The apartment was… _spotless_. There wasn’t a speck of purple or a smear of wasabi anywhere to be seen, and Clint’s bed was back in place, neatly made up with clean linens. They’d even taken the duct tape off the power outlets and bathed Lucky, who was sacked out snoring in his basket like he’d just run a doggie marathon, not even twitching at their arrival.

Phil was personally writing a commendation for _every single one_ of Jasper’s trainees, and maybe buying Jasper himself a bottle of good scotch.

“Huh,” Clint said, looking around and blinking. “Wow. SHIELD really gets shit done.”

“I’m impressed,” Phil said, realizing that he was still standing in the doorway and moving them inside. “I have to admit, I wasn’t looking forward to getting the glitter out of the sheets.”

“I want to make some kinda suggestion about something _else_ we could get on th’sheets,” Clint said, through a yawn, “but, like. Maybe later.”

“Let’s get you in bed, babe,” Phil said. “You need to sleep off the rest of that pill, rest your leg. You’ve got PT again tomorrow.”

“Stay down here a while?” Clint said, looking up at him with a sweet, shy expression that melted his heart. “I mean, if you’re not too tired?”

“Gladly,” Phil said, kissing his hair. He wasn’t in any hurry to separate either, not after the things they’d just said. What he really wanted was to curl up in bed with Clint and cling to him, to wrap himself around him and be wrapped around in turn, to sleep and wake in a puddle of Clint’s warmth and scent and breath. Unfortunately, hardcore cuddling was out of the question until Clint had healed more, so Phil was happy enough to sit on the couch next to Clint’s bed and watch him sleep, maybe hold his hand.

Phil’d long since come to terms with the fact that deep down, he was basically a giant sap.

They got Clint settled into bed, his leg propped up and his pillows arranged, then Phil went upstairs to change. He pulled on a set of Clint’s worn flannel sleep pants and a threadbare SHIELD academy tee, shoved his feet into his sheepskin slippers (Clint’s floors got cold at night) and went back downstairs.

Clint was asleep by the time he got there.

Phil ran a gentle hand over his hair, then dimmed the lights and wandered over to the fridge. He’d been too busy and then too frazzled to eat much, and he wanted to stave off a headache in the morning.

He opened the door, and stared.

The contents of the top shelf had all been moved to clear a large space, which was filled with a delicately painted porcelain platter, little islands of orange peeking through its swaddling of plastic wrap. There was a note on top, neat cursive writing with little flourishes, scribbled on the back of a flyer Phil had picked up at a coffee shop advertising chair yoga classes at the Y.

_Phil,_

_Enjoy these. You’ve earned them._

_Welcome to the family,_

_Natasha_

He pulled out the platter and peeled off the wrap. It was very nearly full of uni; Natasha must have taken it straight off the display and hidden it before the Buffet Incident had occurred.

He wavered a minute, caught between shocked, ecstatic greed and the guilty conviction that there was something not right about eating an entire serving platter full of expensive sushi. 

Really, though, it wasn’t like it would keep until later. 

It would be a crime to let it go to waste.

And ecologically wasteful, for the fish—or, well, echinoderms—to be caught for nothing.

Morally, really, Phil was _obligated_ to eat it.

He carried the platter over to the couch and rested it on the cushions next to him, leaning against the side of Clint’s bed. Clint murmured drowsily and slid an arm out of bed, resting half on the back of the couch and half on Phil’s shoulders.

Phil sighed happily, letting Clint’s deep soft breathing relax him, then, slowly and with great relish, ate the entire thing.

It was _amazing._

He fell asleep almost as soon as he was done, and dreamed of glittery purple fish swimming through the air. When he woke, it was to sunshine and Clint’s smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just the epilogue to go!!


	11. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All good things must come to an end. Fortunately, some of them make room for even better things to begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has been sustaining me with your delightful comments and kudos during this journey!! You are all tremendous and amazing. And especially thanks to Jackdaws45, for winning this story in the Fandom Loves Puerto Rico auction and being so patient while it took me simply ages to finish.

**_Two Months Later_ **

The golden evening light slanted across the street, casting a nostalgic glow over the display of jars in the window of a nearby artisanal chutney shop. Phil took a deep, only somewhat exhaust-filled breath, enjoying the mild spring air and the chance to stretch his legs after a day spent hunched over his laptop.

“Hey, babe,” Clint said, laying a hand on Phil’s elbow. “Ease up a minute, yeah?”

Phil looked around, then slowed, wincing as he noticed the tiny hitch in Clint’s gait. He was basically recovered from the Coney Island Squid Incident, but he was still working on building up his endurance.

“I’m sorry,” he said, taking Clint’s hand and resuming a more moderate pace. “Tough PT day?”

“Yeah, they’re really putting me through my paces,” Clint said. “You know how it is.”

Phil squeezed his hand, wishing he’d suggested they take a cab to Steve’s place. Clint was doing so well most of the time that it was easy to forget he wasn’t back to 100% yet. “We could have skipped tonight,” he said. “I’m sure the team would have understood.”

Clint shot him a disbelieving look. “Are you serious? Or do you not read your email, because I know for a fact I saw you copied on that note from Captain _I’m-Not-Angry-Just-Disappointed_ about how he wanted a chance to celebrate our happiness in person. And the one from Jan. And the one from Tony.” 

“Apparently just eloping and announcing it with a courthouse selfie on the Avengers group chat isn’t the low-hassle solution we’d hoped,” Phil said, valiantly stifling the urge to make any reference to his pre-nuptial qualms with the plan. Nobody liked an “I told you so,” especially if it was true.

Plus, well. Clint had been mostly naked, sprawled out in a patch of sun in their bed. He’d looked over at Phil, all backlit and gorgeous, and said “I just don’t want to see another sun rise on a day where you aren’t my husband,” and, well. What human being could reasonably be expected to resist something like that? Clint’d had to see _one_ more unmarried sunrise—New York had a 24-hour waiting period, and they didn’t want to draw media attention by requesting a waiver—but it had been the last one.

“Okay, point,” Clint said. “But I still maintain that having to grovel to all our friends is a small price to pay when you consider the prospect of Jan and Tony trying to help us plan a wedding.”

Phil shuddered. “I can only imagine.”

“Yeah, one spread in _Vanity Fair_ was enough for about twelve lifetimes,” Clint said. “Still, it might have been nice to take a honeymoon.”

“We’ll get there,” Phil said. “I think this op is going to wrap up in a few weeks, and then I should be able to take a good chunk of leave.”

“Maybe I should slow my roll with the PT, make sure I’m still on injured reserve when you’re free,” Clint said, grinning. “Otherwise, who knows, I might get kidnapped by a, a giant space platypus or something.”

“Stop, you’ll jinx us,” Phil said, his stomach twisting a little at the thought of Clint getting hurt again, no matter how joking his tone.

“Aw, babe, too soon? I’m sorry,” Clint said, slipping his arm around Phil’s waist and squeezing a little, brushing his cheek with a kiss. “It was just a bad joke.” 

Phil leaned into Clint’s side. “Any space platypus who wants you will have to go through me first,” he said, relishing Clint’s raspy little chuckle. “Anyway, don’t impugn your _Vanity Fair_ spread,” he said, trying to change the subject. “That was a great spread.”

Clint waggled his eyebrows. “You’re just saying that because I was shirtless and fondling arrows for most of it.”

“How is that different from any random Saturday?” 

“Eyeliner, mostly,” Clint said, and Phil felt his face warm at the memory of one particularly... _memorable_ pose, Clint looking backward over his golden bare shoulder, his bright eyes rimmed with dark liner that made their color look as clear as a tropical lagoon.

He must have tensed, or something, because Clint looked at him for a second and then grinned, wide and sparkling.

“Why, Phillip Coulson,” he said. “Did you jerk off to my pretentious magazine shoot?”

It _had_ been pretentious; that was the worst part. They’d done Clint up in a bunch of pseudo-classical poses, draped him artistically with scarves and loincloths and those armor skirt things from _The 300,_ and done some kind of Photoshop filter to make the images look sort of like paintings. Clint had been lit like he was the focal point in an unusually homoerotic Caravaggio, or possibly the new spokesmodel for an Italian fragrance line. 

The headline had read “Eros Meets Apollo.” Phil had ten copies.

It wasn’t that Phil had _bought_ ten copies. He’d bought two, one to read and one to collect. He’d found the other eight in his desk, locker, gym bag, gun case, car, briefing packet for a mission to take down a weapons smuggler in Manila, laptop bag, and slipped inside the envelope of his annual open enrollment packet, because Jasper Sitwell thought he was a funny man and Nick and Victoria did nothing but egg him on.

“No,” Phil replied, entirely too late to be convincing.

Clint bit his lip, eyes dancing. “You don’t sound sure.”

“I mean,” Phil said. “Not _directly_. Although I admit the, er, imagery may have been somewhat… inspiring. Before I met you, of course. I wouldn’t have—after, that would have been creepy.”

“Aw, sweetheart,” Clint said. “I wouldn’t’a minded. I’d jerk off to _your_ photoshoot, if you had one.”

“I’m not exactly the model type,” Phil said, though he couldn’t help feeling a warm glow of pride.

“Bullshit,” Clint said. “Two words: grey suit.”

“That’s mostly tailoring,” Phil said, then yelped when Clint goosed him.

“Yeah, _that’s_ no tailoring, babe,” he said. “Sorry to break it to you, but your ass is a work of art.” His hand lingered on the curve of Phil’s cheek for a moment before he gave it an affectionate pat and let go. “Which, remind me later, we’ve got an appointment.”

“You and… my ass?”

“Yup. I haven’t had my mouth on it in, like, seventeen hours; it’s a travesty.” He actually licked his lips, and Phil felt his face heat and his pants tighten a little. 

“Oh, look,” Phil said, trying not to sound flustered. Later, Coulson. There would be time for all that _later._ “We’re here.”

Steve buzzed them in, and they fit themselves with difficulty into the tiny elevator that had been retrofitted into a weird corner of the building and rode it up to Steve’s floor. The door opened just as Phil was raising his hand to knock—super soldier hearing was a hell of a thing—and Steve stood in the doorway, blocking it with his shoulders and looking shifty.

“Clint, Phil! Hi,” he said. “Thanks for coming. So… promptly.” He twitched, with the air of a man who was very deliberately not looking over his shoulder. 

He raised his voice a little. “Congratulations on your wedding, guys! I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, but it’s really great to see you.” 

“Thanks, Cap,” Clint said. “Good to be here.” He stepped slightly to one side, like he was going to go around Steve to get into the apartment, and Steve shifted his weight, the tips of his ears going pink.

“Um,” Steve said, still a little too loud. “Ah, thanks so much for all your help with the board, Phil. We had the first meeting last week and everything went great.”

“Yes, so you said in your email,” Phil said, trying not to smile.

“Right,” Steve said. “Yes.” He rested an arm on each side of the doorjamb, looking a little frantic around the eyes.

“For fuck’s sake, Steve, aren’t you supposed to be a master tactician? How are you so terrible,” Natasha said, then slipped under one of Steve’s arms and wrapped Clint and Phil both up in a hard, fast hug—impressive, considering each of them was probably half again as wide as she was, but Phil had long ago stopped trying to figure out her mysterious ways. She shooed Steve inside and gestured them to follow. “Pretend to be surprised,” she murmured as they walked past her.

“Surprise!” an untidy chorus of voices exclaimed.

The room was stuffed with Avengers, crowded around a table so full of food Phil wasn’t sure how it hadn’t collapsed yet. There was a banner hung from the ceiling that said “Congratulations Clint and Phil,” although Phil could faintly see the outline of the words “on Your Retirement” showing underneath their names. A smaller table off to one side held a gorgeous tiered wedding cake, decorated with arrows and SHIELD eagles instead of roses, and next to it, under a crystal dome, was another platter of uni, the individual pieces of sushi molded into little heart shapes.

“Oh,” Clint said, softly, and his eyes grew suspiciously bright. “Guys. Wow, thank you.” 

Phil looked around, and everywhere he looked he saw friends; not just Avengers, he realized, but SHIELD too; Jasper and Nick, Melinda and Andrew, Victoria and Izzy, and Jasper’s trainees, who had technically graduated already but were taking some sort of advanced superhero-liaison course. It was hard to imagine a scene less like his first team dinner, not just in the relative lack of chaos, but in how he felt. It hit him, all in a rush; this was his life, these were his friends, Clint was his _husband_ , and he had never been so happy in his life; he’d never even conceptualized being that happy, before. 

Clint pulled Phil close and buried his hot face in Phil’s neck, a little overcome; he was always surprised, somehow, by how much people loved him, even though he was the most lovable person Phil had ever met. Phil kissed his cheek, lingering and tender.

“Love you, angel,” he whispered, and he was teasing Clint a little but also he totally meant it.

Clint laughed into Phil’s shoulder, squeezing him tight for a long moment before relaxing and pulling back enough that Phil could see his face, beautiful and beloved and alight with joy.

“Yeah, darlin’,” he said, his voice rough with feeling. “Yeah. Me too.”


End file.
